16 Nov 2006
Wow I can’t wait until this time tomorrow. So much stuff to get done now this whole uni gig is over. Incidentally, one whole year out of the way, eh?
This next couple of weeks will be fun… shooting a short film Saturday, Katy’s birthday that evening, somehow bidding in an eBay auction on Sunday morning whilst at TACKLES (might need to delegate that one!) to pick up some cheap lighting bars, continuing shoot Sunday afternoon, then I’ll be at work all week to catch up on the time I’ve been out of action because of exams/assessments, etc., and chase up all kinds of exciting things that have been on hold (including SMS stuff, yay!) for a conference in early December.
Then, next Saturday, there’s the FEVA Promoting the Word through Text and Image conference, which is plenty exciting and all the cool kids will be there, so get along to it if you can (it’s cheap for a media conference or about average for a Christian conference — worth it either way!)
Wednesday week there’s a performance on at Matthias by the drama kids (it’s a thing we do for networking with kids and parents in the local area more than anything, but it’s run by the kids ministry people at our church.) that shouldn’t be too high stress (at least for me) but I’ll be off work for a day for, then the next evening web-blast06 is being put on by the fine folks from WIPA (I’m going courtesy of hearing about it through WSG, not part of the elite that forms that organisation at present ;-)) at the Old Fitzroy, which is a fun little pub (and theatre) in Woolloomooloo. Which is all fun and games but weirdly suspended between high-priced real estate and the dodge-the-syringes bits of Sydney… shrug.
After that, I’ll hopefully cruise steadily towards the end of the year (December 14 for me, pretty much, coz I’m away til Christmas and it’s basically the New Year after that), finding a programmer and hammering out a bit more stuff for the early early parts of 2007 when development will (God willing) kick off in earnest. Last web thing for the year for me is going to be Webjam on December 12 at Hotel CBD (right down the road from where I used to work, actually) which should be a great deal of fun. I was tempted to try and present something but figure I’m in such a state of permanent verbosity I’d find it hard to do anything useful with three minutes. So I’ll be there heckling in the crowd :-) Should be great fun. If you’re keen to come along to either web thing drop a comment after you’ve RSVP’d (web-blast is full already, but Webjam appears to be open still) and we can arrange to meet up beforehand or something.
But I can’t get any work done until this exam is over because it makes me feel too guilty about not studying. Sigh. Incidentally, reading a great book on Tennyson and Madness (if only it were Madness and Modernism, but perhaps they’re occasionally synonymous!) by Ann Colley.
Colley, Ann C. Tennyson and Madness. The University of Georgia Press. 1983. if you’re interested — got some great stuff on his Maud monodrama which is the reason it got borrowed in the first place!
15 Nov 2006
I have got to get a better domain name. Some poor guy just tried to send a quote to my email address @goah.com
This domain is definitely not designed for telephone communication.
Any ideas for another one (I’m not relinquishing this one yet) with greater respect for the phonetic sensibilities of our language? Various combinations of josh/joshua street/st are available at both gTLD and ccTLD levels, but they bore me somewhat. Open to all ideas, accepting of them only at my discretion. ;-)
14 Nov 2006
Went and got back my last assessment for English 1005 today. Predictably, nothing pleasant, but only shy 5% of a pass. (The exam can still make me pass). I pity anyone reading my uni transcript in the future, because I’m on track for a distinction (I need a meagre 59 in the exam) in the other English course I’m doing this semester, and aiming for an HD (I would need 92 in the exam) just to make the contrast all the more confusing.
And I think I’m finally starting to get this modernity thing, too. Way to pull it together in the last week, the course has been fun but completely thematically unsound up until earlier today! My only concern with the exam for that subject is that the first part requires close textual analysis (which I haven’t started yet) of a poem, and I’m afraid I’m going to try and go all functional grammar ninja and try to open up a can of experiential analysis on its ass, managing only to cut myself on the can as the poem runs away shouting war slogans.
Very modern.
So, hopefully I will avoid slightly more, err, exotic forms of analysis and just stick to the sensible stuff. Either way, it’s reassuring to know that at least in one of my English subjects this semester I could continue to do the don’t-write-anything-in-exam-and-still-pass dance. One of these days I’ll put in enough work to get good at all my subjects for that semester. One day.
14 Nov 2006
Direct from Kingsford Maccas.
It’s also on Google Video if you’re not Flash-friendly (they offer MP4 downloads as well as the in-site Flash and proprietary GVP (Google video player) rubbish).
Alluded to in the video, “myspace audience” are located at myspace.com/morbelli. Not up at time of writing.
13 Nov 2006
I just discovered (thanks Tori) the past papers for ENGL1025 from 2005 and 2004, to bitter disappointment. The texts are different enough from the bulk of the ones we’ve looked at that the focus is mainly unhelpful, and the wording of the questions fall victim to the vicissitudes of academics constantly trying to out-perform themselves in turgidity and profuse obscurity”
‘The texts of modernity seem transfixed between an ardent longing for certainties and the knowledge that certainties are impossible to discover.’
Explore this conundrum in two or more texts on the unit.
That is an amusing example: who would have thought one would encounter the word “conundrum” in an examination context? It is simply indulgent and the opposite extreme of last week’s featured administrative prose from the same institution. A happy compromise, if indeed there is one, is not immediately apparent!
But, let it be noted, this particular textual brutality appears to be vastly more prevalent amongst the modernists (and onwards) in the English department … but maybe that’s just me being prejudiced against certain ways of thinking ;-)