12 Apr 2007
What is a ‘mission’? How do you reconcile the meaning you associate with that and its Latin root, missio, to send, and actual use of the term? Why do we talk about a “mission to do x” and hereafter refer to “mission” as though it encompassed “to do x” itself, rather than the act of sending?
What on earth is a life centred on two bits of wood hurriedly nailed together and stained crimson? Do people worship symbols on particularly sugary buns?
I think this website is a measure of discontentment. I rarely post when there is nothing to grumble about, because good news is apparently boring. This website makes me feel guilty. It’s one big occasionally-ugly mirror. I don’t look into it when things are good, and pour the bad into it the rest of the time interspersed with geeky things… a slightly acquisitive load of rubbish designed to obfuscate and create a false set of values that improve (in the eye of the beholder, for a time) the reflection. It’s easy to forget these things.
At any rate, blogs are a useless journal medium. Too much happens in any given day. Yesterday, I installed QuickBooks and realised that absolute morons are able to run their own businesses with good reason and it needn’t be so hard afterall. *insert rant about software*
Tax is predictably boring stuff, though, so when Claud suggested we go see Becoming Jane (contrary to rumours I dragged her along — though if she hadn’t, I would have done… we enjoyed it for different reasons, I maintain!) I was there in a matter of… well, about an hour. Somewhere in the middle we went shopping for food & ate lunch. *insert rant about the film, about the wonderful speed-distraction medium that IM is, and maybe others*
Spent a lazy-enough afternoon at her house until a phone call promised poker and food of the barbecued variety at Gareth’s place, which ended in two particularly dim-witted hands, and some interesting reading of Time magazine’s global warming issue. Some of the 51 ideas printed were on the mark, others seemed a little less so (energy efficient lighting was one I know enough about to take issue with, hybrid cars were thankfully nowhere that I could see). *insert rant about global warming bandwagon*
Later, I started contributing more carbon by trying to drive Budd’s car (a manual, I’d only drive a manual lawnmower in the past) as he listened to his clutch slowly being torn to shreds. *insert rant about manual/auto transmission and licensing and the like*
There are other funny stories to be shared within that, but each of those comprises an entire post of its own. I have no interest in chronicling my life with that degree of detail. Perhaps if I were a Dickinson-esque recluse I’d have time enough to write and little enough to write about that I might write more. But thankfully I’m not.
29 Mar 2007
I officially don’t get it. Mind you I’m working from a CMYK file at some bizarre resolution and it’s just not scaling properly at all, so it’s probably not entirely my fault… the usual print-web mindset problem methinks. Only this is extra frustrating coz it’s due by this evening and I’ve got a Shakespeare scene to workshop this evening also… so I’ve basically got 3 hours left to build an entire website. Crap.
26 Mar 2007
If you a moderate degree of IT proficiency, this course will be wasting your time. On Wednesday I get to attend a one hour tutorial on how to use a library database. Further, our delightful course co-ordinator had the audacity to pretend that the tutorial “is vital, not only for your team, but for your individual assessment”.
Way to insult the collective intelligence of the course’s participants. Not that I have a particularly high regard for the required standard of intelligence to participate in said course. Hint: if you want a uni degree with very little effort, do a Digital Cultures major. The only problem will be trying not to shudder every time you see yourself in the mirror, because you will have buzzwords swarming around you without end. Oh, yeah, and you have to live with the knowledge that your study is of absolutely personal or (especially) professional value whatsoever, unless of course you like the poison so much you go back and start teaching it.
Yes, some hyperbole might have been tossed about in the making of this blog post. It’s still a bloody useless course (and, from what I can gather, major programme) that’s particularly good at insulting its participants’ intelligence.
Our university has a Learning Centre for those who struggle using basic ICT resources. I’m trying not to be too demeaning about it, but, in all seriousness, who would sign up for a course about the freakin’ Internet without knowing how to use a bloody library database? They taught those skills to kids when I was in primary school. Yes, that’s 1990′s.
I so can’t wait to give course feedback on this already.
22 Mar 2007
Okay.
For whatever reason, I wasn’t paying attention when I bought CS2.
I somehow failed to realise that Production Studio Pro has nearly all the same things (ex. DTP stuff that I don’t really have much of a use for, but it’s nice having anyway) and more (Premiere, AfterEffects) for… not a lot more money at all.
*breathes deeply*
On the plus side, Creative Suite 3 is launching later this month though I don’t know if that means the next version of Premiere just yet. So I’ll wait til that’s an option before purchasing Production Studio, which means I get CS3 versions of the stuff I actually use — Photoshop & Illustrator — and still have CS2 of non-essentials, like InDesign, GoLive, etc. Acrobat is going to be alright for a while coz I’ve already got Acrobat 8 because of relatively-late acquisition of CS2. Dreamweaver… I don’t particularly care about, though I’ve happily used it for various things.
And yeah, I’m still going to uni and doing all that sorta thing, so it’s cheaper. I’m just vaguely annoyed I didn’t drop $200 more for Production Studio when I could’ve if I’d read a bit more, but it’s done now. Hopefully they’ll launch a new version of that along with CS3 so I can pick it up soon after the end of this month.
One day I might even make a decent amount of money out of this :P My reasoning is that living at home & studying = good time for doing loss-running, skill- and network-building, moderately-expensive-but-just-within-means geeky things.
At the minute I’m not losing money on it, but it’s not something I’d be able to afford to do if I were dependent on regular income for rent, or whatever. Speaking of regularity, John C & I ran job interviews yesterday and decided to get one of the applicants onboard for CYIADA! So now that enters the build phase & we’re actually going to be MakingStuffâ„¢ that’ll become more directed and stable — not in a financial sense, but just in a number-of-hours-a-week kinda way. At the minute my hours have fluctuated a bit depending on what I’ve been able to think of/motivated to get done, but that’ll obviously stabilise a lot as I move back to cutting code and actually seeing it develop!
Anyway. Can’t wait.
21 Mar 2007
I’m a grown man. (lol) (10:12 PM):
it just seemed like the right thing to say
Heh.
(This was in response to the news that Claudia & I are going out. Hehehe.)
Multinational corporations: Commemorating solutions to interpersonal dilemmas since May 15, 1940.