I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.
— @joahua
Took a bunch of photos of the Sydney to Hobart start yesterday, about as many of helicopters (there were 18 up there, only major networks I didn’t see were Ten and SBS) as of boats. Meh!
Here are a few pics from the lot.
No time to do this justice, need sleep, but had to post this link from earlier today. It’s about a Russian photographer in the early 20th century who developed a unique colour photography system. Good stuff. Make sure you follow the link through to the Library of Congress exhibition pages with more photos, etc!
Yesterday I realised my 40GB hard drive was finally full. And it was a most unpleasant sensation. Now I need to actually get a fileserver working, because it’s way too much hassle to install a new hard drive in this machine + copy stuff onto it (I’m out of IDE channels so I can’t just bang a new one in). Because, you know, setting up a fileserver is just so much more trivial.
One of the reasons the hard drive is so full is the ridiculous number of photos I take. The situation isn’t assisted by ridiculously beautiful sunsets ridiculously often. These two just in:
I’m contemplating moving all my photos onto the PC known as Media on our network (it’s a Shuttle XPC thing with Windows MCE installed), because it has a 320GB hard drive, and because WOW Media Center’s photo album playback is awesome. I used it today and was very impressed. Definitely not for everything, but if you just have a heap of photos to go through sequentially it’s great. I was sitting there with a remote clicking “next next next” as required, and it was a throughly painless experience.
[Aside: I am proud at having combined these three things – starting with my running out of disc space, actually more due to video than photos, but I needed the photo reference to launch into the sunset big and onwards to Media Center – under the title of “Out of space”. It really only applies well to the first one, but hopefully the post meandered transparently enough that no-one noticed or cared. I say this now because evidently people do read what I write here for the writing. Curious as to whether or not I can get criticism as well as praise, or if people will choose to say nothing at all rather than something nice. Not that I mind comments that are nice, but… it’d be good to move beyond that. Okay, this aside is definitely outside the scope of the title!]
Having said all that, Merry Christmas all. That bears absolutely no relation to the title, unless you’re some weird conspiracy theorist who is convinced that Jesus was sent by Martians. I prefer to believe he’s the son of God, which might strike some as no less weird, but at least it’s historically correlated (both in prior prophecy and contemporary recording)! Whatever your perspective, try and think about why you’re celebrating Christmas this year…
The most frustrating thing in the world is knowing that you have several bites from a single mosquito, thinking that it’s probably going to die because it’s had too much to drink — revenge!! –, and then realising its pain will be over as its stomach explodes, probably without it even realising — do mosquitoes have brains? — whilst you will have to live with the itches for the next several days. Ah, summer.
Wednesday night, at the SACS Speech Night, I was reminded of how much I’ll miss the sound of St. Andrews. I don’t even think the music at Speech Night was that great (and stage movements were certainly leaving something to be desired, but that’s another matter), so comment is not being made on the basis of the quality of that… it simply presented a catalyst for entropic ruminations that occasionally (or perhaps more than occasionally) take place in the mind of this particular individual, focussing “random reflection upon the nature of SACS” on the sound of that space. We are bound to the senses, and it is that of aural perception which, at this present moment, defines St. Andrews.
I’ll miss going to some lunchtime concert Tori has been roped into performing at — though secretly she enjoys it, I infer from nervousness and an enunciated indifference to the opinions of any aside from that of her mother: something which I certainly take no issue with, being along simply for the ride and offering perhaps as much eloquent and applicable criticism as the piano stool on which she had sat and played something from another world — hearing music that is undoubtedly beautiful and meaningful and of value, but it speaks in a tongue (spelt correctly) apart from my own. The words drift over, though, and its essence is often (if not always) captured. At least in part.
These chance encounters with Babel are a near-inescapable facet of the life of a not-musician at that school. There is music to challenge. It incites thought, violently. There is something more buried here unseen. But what? No matter, let it speak in its own language. The tongue, of course, varies. Some do not take the mind to task. Others are guttural, cutting: they haul the mind to consciousness and set it to task unseen… and almost certainly not understood. There is a desire, however, to resolve this, such that these velar enunciations might become understood. Then, harsh sounds launch into an eloquent refrain of unparalleled beauty, if it could only be understood!
Comprehension spawns creation. Eloquence is a sign of vitality, whether seen and comprehended or glanced upon and passed over: it needn’t bear understanding the first time. Ever? One would dare to hope. Though it must be said that the work begun by one may, at another’s hands, give way past the precipice of cognition into that dexterity of the mind that comes with a piece falling into place, one last cog enabling a whole series of gears.
And when will this come? Uncertainty pervades this point. With listening. To what, and for how long? Wrong questions. Impatience here is senseless, though some music may encourage it. [Grating sounds of post-modern composition break over the speakers] Yes. Senseless. For what else do you wait? Another piece to similarly rush through? And another? Finite achievement is erudite compared to the superficiality of infinite experience. Such that ‘infinite’ is within this life, within this understanding. Pitiful. Why, in asking ‘when’, the request is put forth: “how long until I may progress, forget this and move onwards?” Thus, that which meanders should be seen as a luminary force, bringing to light impatience, the race towards an unenvisaged goal. The goal, of course, is achieved: being defined only as progression to the next thing. Macro-experience never comes into play, nor perhaps should it. Music is… of the now? And the now is transient, ephemeral, diaphanous. Without clarity even in that instant… or especially in that instant, forming behind once again as the water subsides once a body has been removed from it.
Soundtrack/progression/value-added nothing. More ideas float, but I feel no compulsion to detail them here. Ideas, like music, may continue to exist in the mind. Some will grate, others will linger, still others will drift away when you most desire their company: and triumph against the reticent ones will occasionally come, though not always. Some things are meant to float in the mind, around the consciousness. Uncalled, yet without any desire to push them away once experienced — Evidenced here, you will observe, as I drift from speaking in the first person to the disconnected murmurings of consciousness, and then return once again to analysis. Which, it should be said, is not anathema to music… another way in which it is a great accomplice of the idea. Both are art.