12 Dec 2006
Not enough people enrolling in honours? How about sending a letter (yes, paper letter) to every single 1st year student who achieves a credit or above (after all, that’s all you need for honours) asking them if they would be interested? Because, you know, credit-average students are all brilliant and passionate enough to bother sticking around at uni that extra year.
It’s flattering and all, but a little misplaced methinks. Now all I have to do is bicker with them until I’m allowed to do second-year history on account of perplexing prerequisites. Which involves getting in touch. Which involves kidnapping someone, I think, because leaving a message just doesn’t seem to be too effective in that place.
Please excuse my pent up sarcasm. This is pre-holiday trauma brought on by packing whilst trying not to get too frustrated at overly panicked family members and getting on top of freelance work whilst waiting for some moderately important details that were meant to arrive at “close of business” (quote) today. It’s now 5.05pm. I’d normally say it was just someone else’s problem (I’m only gone ten days), but this is my baby we’re talking about, so it’s not quite that easy.
The joys of working for a startup, hey? Only it’s a well-funded startup sharing premises with not-really-a-startup-at-all. So maybe I will be able to poach staff from other startups… one particular individual came to my attention at a meeting last night & rest assured I will be working hard to convince him that he wants to quit his job ;-) Pumba was sitting a few seats away when we started talking and disappeared to get a drink. He burst out laughing on his return because of the speed with which I’d managed to launch into my project spiel to this particular individual… I felt kinda bad at the time but now just find it amusing :P
Anyway. I leave tomorrow and will hopefully get so much more reading done than in the last eight months at uni. And maybe skin cancer.
12 Dec 2006
Photo printing is the funnerest thing in the entire world. Only problem is sometimes they’re not 100% straight and that bugs me. Time to invest in a guillotine, methinks.
11 Dec 2006
There was a liquid of sorts. It was an excellent liquid, but at the same time feared and potent. It occupied a small bottle that must have the entirety of its contents sprayed upon someone by a given moment, or explode dangerously.
It came to be that there was a room filled with people, panicking about the necessity of the use of this bottle, and a holder of the bottle who must direct it at someone. The holder only came into possession of the bottle in the last seconds, and poured out its contents on one person standing opposite (seemingly chosen at random). Upon doing this, the person was transformed.
He (it was a he) became god-like. He was, someone remarked, in every aspect identical to God, though not good. At once he launched upon the city he resided within, embarking on all manner of deeds terrible and wonderful (that is, deeds which inspired wonderment, admired for their audacity more than their essence). And this man had one after whom he lusted greatly; the one loved by the holder (and unintended creator of this being). In vampiric guise, he could also turn her into one as powerful as himself, as dreaded. And he did.
The two of them began to turn more and more people as they tired of one another and sought to increase the destruction they wrought. Slowly, more were brought into the fold, then their numbers grew increasingly rapidly.
The holder encountered the two of them departing a theatre, implored his lover to return, but she looked back at him emptily, with a vague hostility (apathy was closer the mark). The first created god took her by the arm violently and she hissed at him, but they departed together. The holder was left standing in a cavernous interior; he became aware that more and more of those around him had been brought under their mark, they had all an empty power. It struck him as empty for what is power if not above that of others? Surely with an increase in the commonness of such a thing its scarcity decreased, and with that, its value.
So he became one of them, infected with this illusory power, and extracted his own blood. In a room in some pumping plant more defined by shadows than the light which surrounded them he analysed it, looking, searching. The others once in that room when the holder let this man have such power unwittingly cried at him in mocking voices, that he had fallen himself into their fold. But he was searching. And discovered an antidote, some way to return power to that God which is good as well as powerful; a means of return.
It spread through the water. Eventually, it reached the first-created god and his paramour. Eventually, the holder’s love was freed.
–
Another dream I remembered. This one was particularly strange. I have recorded it here with an altered ending but as little flourish or complex language as possible; it was visually rich and would take too long to describe. Any attempts to read this as strongly allegorical would probably render me a heretic — suffice to say, I am aware it does not stand up to scrutiny in this manner.
The essential idea of the dream was actually the opposite: if the main (anonymous) female were to have embraced the created antagonist because of his promise of distinction, the male protagonist would win her back by making everyone the same as her (by becoming ‘infected’ himself & spreading this to the entire populace), hoping then that she would return to him. So it’s a quest-romance narrative of sorts with attached very twisted theology. The whole dream felt so empty, like there was a goal towards which everyone was working but there was no actual reason for them doing so. Bizarre. A little scary. Hadn’t even watched any vampire movies in the last couple of days… there is a strong undercurrent of dialogic thinking that is perplexing to say the least.
Yes. Anyway. Seeing as I remembered a dream or two I thought I’d indulge myself in gratuitous (albeit vague) musings about it all.
11 Dec 2006
E-mail should just work.
I resent badly setup/maintained/functioning e-mail systems probably more than any other web deficiency. I get immensely frustrated when trying to work through a slow web proxy, but that is nothing compared to the wrath that an e-mail running several hours late (or, you know, simply being dropped and not arriving at all) brings forth in me.
An IT department shall fear me tomorrow. (I say that in a loving way, of course…)
08 Dec 2006
Your CDs are featured in $10 CD shops. Clearly, enough stock has been made that there can be excess and demand enough that these places will buy it and hope to move it quickly!
I bought a Switchfoot CD today. And enjoyed it. Their music works a lot better as an album than as standalone songs, especially that horrific title track. I don’t understand its appeal at all. The rest is quite pleasant (and surprisingly, to me at least, overtly Christian — probably because they somehow get by without mentioning Jesus or Christ or anything like that on their website)
Almost sarcastic in places, which isn’t quite what I was expecting. I like that sort of thing. Meh.
Also been listening to Sarah Blasko the last week, trying to figure out all kinds of clever links to the poem on which the album What the sea wants, the sea will have is based (Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner). So far I have nothing. Except a burning question as to the hierarchy of the two — is this like “the film based upon the book”, wherein the more artful form is generally taken to be that which was prior? Or is there something else afoot, when one can extrapolate an entire album from a relatively straightforward (though admittedly textually rich and voluminous) poem?
There is a certain frustration deciphering contemporary works that isn’t there with those of dead white men, simply because with one there is the possibility of exertion to obtain a straightforward answer. That, of course, would be admitting defeat — and I probably wouldn’t like it as much as the frustration, anyway.
What the sea wants is, by the way, a prime example of why not to buy albums off electronic music stores. The album is physically superb (though there are dodgy jewel case versions floating around — the cardboard one is the good one) in terms of its packaging (yay for UV spot printed birds & comprehensive liner notes & photos in a separate booklet!) and content.
Also speaking of competitive advantages of… everything vs. online music stores… the $10 Switchfoot CD is not, in fact, a CD. It’s a SACD. Presumably Hybrid goodness because it played in an anachronistic CD player I’m using when in transit at the minute (yes, you read that right. I can’t get a portable device that works with this lossless stuff, it’s ridiculous. And if you dare suggest I buy an iPod, the latest Bond movie has a method of torture that you may be interested in–saw that film tonight with people, was good times–though that scene had every male in the building cringing massively). I wasn’t sure if it would even work — because, yes, I check the packaging that closely before I buy stuff — more for watching out to see if it was infested with crappy doesn’t-really-work-properly copy protection rubbish than anything else. But it did. I don’t know if it’s any better, but I’ve only really listened to the SACD version at work on a crappy Dell computer. It has bad AC’97 audio which = lots of line noise, etc.
Onboard audio can be okay for playback (my Venus is but it bloody well should be given how expensive it was), just that computer wasn’t. And it’s time for me to sleep now so I’m not about to test, or then I’ll have to rip as well and inevitably wind up discovering some new and exciting set of codecs that are better for SACD for x reasons, and so forth, then it’ll be 2am again and… general badness ensues.
I’ve already sat up and read the Wikipedia article and lamented the copy protection measures in place. Sigh. *feels like a geek… at least I’m not playing Wii ;-)*