Mitchell put me onto Ponoko, an online fabrication/laser cutting service.
I’ve waited a long time to have a platform for playing Grand Theft Auto 4. Until I got the newly released PC version for christmas & installed it using BootCamp on my new iMac. Where it just runs, but nevertheless I’ve been having the most engrossing game experience I’ve had for years with Niko driving like a crazy person through faux New York. I’m recognising streets and shops in Manhattan where I’ve haven’t been for ten years, hard to get used to driving on the right side of the road though.
We came back to the car where we’d found a park down the alley where Scientology have a Sydney HQ to find a group known as Anonymous protesting outside.
At work, on the social calendar, the season continues to accelerate. And while the pressure continues to build and time continues to shrink I’m carrying the new camera all across town, coming to grips with unfamiliar menus and buttons. First off, performance/standup event called Ship o’ Fools provided a few low-light challenges.
Then at the first of our family xmas celebrations the under 7s took to the pinata Santa in a Lord of the Flies like tribal frenzy.
Back at Clovelly it was hot above the surface and freezing below, skindiving with the gropers.
But worth it for that summery encrusted in salt feeling.
This last one taken by Jes.
We stayed up in the mountains on the weekend, firstly with David & Joyce for a deluxe gastronomic experience inside the Black Modular & secondly further up the hill breathing the rarefied air of the Grose Valley. I’d even brave the huntsman spiders to be able to live up there, though I know its the commute that would kill me.
In other news I’m swimming in new gear, just got a Canon EOS1000D for all its Black DSLR glory and its ability to shoot frames in drive mode till the card fills up, surprisingly absent in the SLR world.
And getting delivery soon of a new imac, have a copy of windows at the ready, just so I can finally play Grand Theft Auto 4 without having to buy a console.
Great review of the new Vampire series tearing up the book charts & a prediction about the bubble bursting in the commercial contemporary art scene.
As you can imagine looking at the picture this 1920s satnav device worked by manually scrolling the map on your wrist device as you progressed. From Strange Maps, further details here.
Never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but the recently released Paul McCartney album is pretty good. Its a band called The Fireman that I’d never heard of with the famous producer, Youth. This is the 3rd album apparently. I’ve disliked most of what he’s done since leaving the Beatles, but this had me from the first Helter Skelter-esque vocal yelps. You can stream it from here.
At Yucca Mountain in Nevada where much of the nuclear waste generated in the US is being stored they’ve had the problem of how do you signpost the danger surrounding this site in a way that will still make sense when English, the USA and all of our cultural references are gone. While the waste continues to radiate.
Its a hard problem thinking about how to address a future so far ahead as to be effectively alien. The material will remain dangerous for at least 10, 000 years. Here is a first draft at some signage, still a bit culturally specific I think.