The ZotBlog

Blog moved

2007-06-16T11:33:00.000+01:00

This blog has now been moved to a more permanent home at www.matthewriddle.com.

Johnny Depp Serenaded by tiny Pirates

2007-06-14T16:43:00.000+01:00

Outdoor pursuits

2007-05-08T15:45:00.000+01:00

Things have started to pick up a bit for Cambridge Lindy Hoppers as far as social dancing goes. Last weekend we decided to exploit all this nice weather and hit Parker's Piece (a park in central Cambridge) armed with a stereo and some snacks. These photos were taken by Graham Stratton. Then on Friday we hit Jazz@John's en masse (there must have been 25 of us) to stun the crowd, and it worked. A lot of people came up to us and asked us where they could learn. More importantly, we had fun. In other news, the cricket season has started and this year I'm captaining Cavendish during the week and playing for Cottenham again on the weekends. I started well with the bat, making 31 not out off about 15 balls in a practice game at Cottenham, and then made 32 (5x4s, 1x6) in the firsts on Saturday. Unfortunately it was a losing cause however, with our guys bowling and fielding badly on a very fast ground to see Doddington make a whopping 360 off 45 overs. Then a friendly game for Cavendish against Blackheath on Sunday was a success despite our loss. We were missing at least 4 of our regular experienced players, and had a host of guys who'd never played together (or never played before) so we used the opportunity to give everyone a bowl and a bat. Blackheath batted first and made 205 from their 40 overs, and we were all out for 143 after a spirited start and some middle order defiance. Even though we lost, we did well to keep them to so few runs, and definitely put in some good individual performances with the bat . The Cavendish season-proper starts next week, so we'll see what happens when it counts.

Barcelona, LLX, and being sick

2007-04-22T20:51:00.000+01:00

A lot has happened since my last post. We were in Barcelona over Easter, attending the Barswingona swing festival. But as you can probably tell from the photos, we were a little more focused on the weather, food, and the wonderful scenery than dancing on this trip. For Lotte and I it was a really nice opportunity to go back to this amazing place for a proper look, because the last two visits were too fleeting. The social dancing was slightly patchy for me, although that may depend more on not knowing many people at the festival. Last weekend was spent at the London Lindy Exchange, which was a much more satisfying dance experience for me. The people were really friendly, and the parties were conducive to mixing, which is one thing I really like in an exchange. And it was excellent value. Unfortunately my weekend ended badly when I came down with the most severe bout of gastro I think I've ever had! As a result we were stuck in London for the whole of Monday, and I stayed home from work for most of the week, only reluctantly venturing in for important meetings. Lotte's been quite unwell with a cold as well, so we spent most of this weekend still in recovery mode, while being visited from London by the lovely Dory. Actually, over the next month or two it looks like we're going to be having a string of guests: Ko & Carla, Beth & Emil, Jojo, Anthony & Sarah, and then Corinne! Then we'll be off to Week 2 of Herrang, so we have a lot to look forward to.

BBC shuts down failed £150m online service

2007-03-15T21:04:00.001Z

An amazing amount of public money appears to have gone to waste after a flood of complaints to the BBC over its BBC Jam service. The BBC Trust released a statement, saying, "Despite a rigorous approval process... BBC Jam has continued to attract complaints from the commercial sector about the parameters of its activities."

read more | digg story

Sponsor Me!

2007-03-02T22:31:00.000Z

On Saturday the 17th of March, I'm going to be taking part in a dance marathon. 8 hours of non-stop swing dancing, all in the aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. So, I know what you're thinking. Why am I telling you, the Internet, about this spectacular dance charity event? I'm glad you asked. I'm telling you because you can be involved even if you can't be there, just by sponsoring me! Donating online is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor the event. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you. At present there is no cure for cystic fibrosis, but the fautly gene has been identified and doctors and scientists are working to find ways of repairing or replacing it. One of the main objectives of the CF Trust is to fund this work.

Melbourne Visit

2007-02-21T13:48:00.000Z

It's a very confusing feeling to go 'home' to Melbourne and then arrive 'home' in Cambridge. More than ever it feels as though there are two parallel universes, each with its own distinct system of spacetime. For instance, I had this overwhelming sensation of travelling back in time as we got to Melbourne. As we drove around familiar streets in the car we hadn't seen for a year (it still has that new smell) we slipped back into Melbourne's rhythms accompanied by the sounds of familiar bands and songs and ("remember THIS?") intelligent public debate on the radio. Even our old mates Ian and Heidi were back in Melbourne, which was even more puzzling since they'd also been in England until very recently.

We got far more achieved in our 20 days than we'd dreamed, including wrestling with two storage units for 4 hours in order to reduce them to one, finding some needed tax records, dozens of work meetings, and some hundreds of hours of much needed social and family time. I decided to edit down our photos into a short slideshow as a QuickTime movie. It's 6Mb, so beware that it might take a while to download. Download Slideshow

A Refreshing Moment

2007-01-24T12:48:00.000Z

Ok, this is one of the things that the internet is good for. The Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmaker's Award is a contest for budding film-makers run every year, and this year's theme is pretty funny. "This year’s screenplay should present a story that illustrates how Diet Coke is an ally for survival in a hectic everyday life… picking people up and calming them down… making their busy lives seem effortless." There are 10 finalists, and a friend of mine submitted the piece that is clearly the best of a good bunch (and I sincerely mean that by the way Paul) entitled 'The Working Girl'. If you have a minute, stop by and click "Submit vote". I suggest going straight to the voting form because you can view all the movies on the voting page and it's much easier. Each clip is only a few seconds long -- ignore the slightly obvious advertising angle and you have to admit they're pretty amusing.

Ways of the Headless Chicken

2007-01-05T13:35:00.000Z

Mike the headless chicken disproves the theory of 'threshold concepts'. Let me explain. I recently started reading David Sudnow's Ways of the Hand - A Re-written Account, on loan from a friend. It's an ethnographer's approach to learning improvised jazz piano, and is interesting to me in the context of the question of the embodiment of (for want of a better term) knowledge. After I got into the first chapter of the book I picked up a couple of others, getting stuck on a Sci Fi thriller that was a present from my sister, Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, among other things. Anyway today a colleague (another Richard) emailed about 'threshold concepts' in canoeing, which reminded me to get back to Sudnow. Threshold concepts (Meyer and Land, 2003) are supposed to be difficult bits of learning that we tend to get stuck on but ultimately allow a kind of breakthrough moment. The thing is, most of the work on these has been done in areas where knowledge is thought of as something you obtain through careful thought, not by practicing something by tinkling the ivories, or in my case, treading the boards. In Lee's case, it also involves kicking people's teeth in (in self defense of course) because he teaches Pencat Silat and just finished his anthropology PhD thesis on the topic.

So is it really all about threshold concepts in that case? Sometimes it must be, because you can often get to the next stage of learning by introducing a concept, like say, lead and follow technique in lindy hop, Sudnow's techniques in WOTH, or in Richard's case, "the static paddle" in a canoe. But also, obviously people must learn these things without ever going through the stage of conceptualising anything. Like learning to drive a manual car without anyone needing to tell you just how to ease off the clutch, or all the pianists who have never really thought about technique but are still technically brilliant. Anyway (stay with me here) this talk of embodied knowledge got me thinking of the story of Mike the Headless Chicken. Yes, Mike the rooster stayed alive for 18 months after having his head lopped off with an axe. He even toured, raising quite a hefty amount of money for his owners before starving to death by accident. He reportedly only had a bit of brainstem left and one ear, yet his bodily functions and reflexes remained completely intact -- so much so that he gained quite a bit of weight over his life time. So Mike's body, in a sense, still "knew" how to survive, just as a spider knows how to spin its web. Yet at the same time we can say that a great dancer might not really know how they do what they do. Yet there will, I'd argue, still be thresholds in their ability to do the things they do -- embodied thresholds, if you like. That's surely one reason professional musicians, dancers and martial arts experts still practice for hours every day to get to the next level. I think this shows that it's not necessarily about concepts, but it might still be about thresholds in learning.

Corn Starch Holes

2006-12-19T15:39:00.001Z

Engagement party photos - part 2

2006-12-08T15:30:00.000Z

Engagement party photos

2006-12-08T15:20:00.000Z

Here's the first batch of photos from our Engagement Party in Utrecht. If you were wondering where the photos were, so were we. It turns out that the family had been preparing a really amazing printed book made from all the photos taken on the night. We were given the book and about 230 digital images when we went over for Sinterklaas. These are just a few of my favourites.

Barcelona Party

2006-12-01T13:52:00.000Z

Here's a couple of photos from the Friday night party at Barcelona. Lotte is judging the Jack'n'Jill contest, and generally having a great time dancing to the spectacular Ivanow Jazz Group. We were over there for a series of weekend workshops that Lotte was teaching with Bill at the Balliball dance studio. I deejayed a 2 hour set on the Saturday night at the studio, and both of us had a fantastic time dancing till the wee hours both nights. We didn't really have enough time for sightseeing, even though we planned an extra couple of days -- but that just means we will have to go back for the Barcelona Swing Festival next year.

Stupidity is Global, but so is Bravery

2006-11-29T13:41:00.000Z

Lotte and I were in Barcelona on the weekend, travelling on a train when a young guy standing next to us was attacked by thugs. It was just before 11pm and the trains were full, mostly with soccer fans returning from a big game that day. As we entered the carriage I noticed two guys with short cropped hair, army boots and the sort of straight-legged jeans of a trademarked 1970s skinhead. To top it off, even though they were speaking Catalan, they were sporting Union Jacks on their jackets, which made me think more of certain skinhead revivalists and their Nazist tendencies. They were probably about 18, sitting with their legs propped up across the benches, and travelling with a girl who was carrying a small white bulldog. It was the sort of group you generally try to avoid. We kept an eye on them until they got up to leave, pushing past me towards a young guy with long hair, probably 16 or 17, standing near the door right behind me. They started to speak to him, obviously taunting him, and one of them reached out and pulled his hair. Hard. He resisted answering them, and then as the train pulled up to the station each of the guys took a swing at him. They hit him hard -- one of the guys connected flush on with his face, sending his head backwards into the wall. It was all too fast to do anything much, and he just stood his ground. He was okay, physically, but I could see how shaken he was by it, as you would expect. All I want to do now is tell that guy how brave I thought he was to just stand there and not give the guys the satisfaction of a fight that could have ended very badly. We reported the thugs at the station, but that was all we could do. Sorry, kid.

UCPD Police Assault Student in University Library

2006-11-16T14:49:00.000Z

If anyone needed any more evidence that the U.S. has become an out of control police state in the last few years, just watch the horrifying video that is doing the rounds today. The student was not able to produce ID on request. Despite the fact that he is quite clearly attempting to comply with the police, he was brutally attacked by several officers with a taser, a technology which is not used in many countries because of the potentially lethal effects. For more about the incident, see Student shot with Taser by UCPD officers and Community responds to Taser use in Powell in Daily Bruin, UCLA. Warning: the video below is distressing.

Does Bush Threaten World Peace?

2006-11-15T16:21:00.000Z

Following up on my last post, it appears that a lot of people both in the U.S. and abroad agree. The Democrats now have control of both Houses, which no doubt has a lot to do with how out of touch the administration had become with public views on the War on Terror. I also noticed today that the Herald Tribune recently published an article entitled International poll ranks Bush a threat to world peace which states: "A majority of people in three countries with close ties to the U.S. — Britain, Canada and Mexico — consider President George W. Bush a threat to world peace, ranking the U.S. president right up there with the leaders of two countries he has labeled part of the "axis of evil" — North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... Majorities in Britain, Canada and Mexico — 69 percent, 62 percent and 57 percent, respectively — said U.S. foreign policy has made the world more dangerous since 2001, according to the poll." So what do you think? Does Bush threaten World Peace?

The US Government is Unhinged

2006-11-03T16:31:00.000Z

Recently I've been following the case of Indiana graduate student Chris Soghoian, who got himself into trouble with the FBI after putting up a website that creates fake boarding passes, just to show how stupid airport security can be. You can argue that Chris made a mistake by creating a script to automatically generate a fake boarding pass, but he did it to prove a point. He probably should have stopped at describing how someone could do it rather than actually creating the script. But the FBI beating down his door to confiscate all of his computer equipment after the site had been taken down? That is not a response that's in proportion with the crime.

Today's Wired story on the incident has a good summary of what happened. Chris has been heartened by a back-down from one of the politicians who was rather hasty in calling for his apprehension, but the fact remains that undue force was used. The story reads more like something you would expect in China or a few years ago in the USSR, not "the home of the free". The speed of descent of United States into a police state is truly astounding, and the sad truth is that it is probably only because Chris is young, articulate, English speaking and computer literate that we're hearing his story at all. I happened to be watching CNN the other night when they were discussing the state of delusion that the US government appears to be in. I couldn't agree more with Andrew Sullivan in that interview. If you happen to be a US citizen, you should do something about it. Write to a politician and tell them you don't think it's right. Link to Chris' blog. And whatever you do, don't vote for the GOP.

Borat does Cambridge

2006-10-09T14:28:00.000+01:00

I hadn't seen this before, but this clip is really worth watching. Borat interviews a few Cambridge Dons in front of Kings College, and learns how to play cricket.

BBC Article

2006-09-22T18:50:00.000+01:00

The BBC Cambridgeshire website posted a story on swing dancing today, featuring me and Lotte answering some funny questions in a short video interview. There's even some shots of all of us doing the Shim Sham, and if you listen really closely you can hear us talking to a woman on her bicycle who wanted to know why not all of us were dressed up in 40s gear. It was all pretty unplanned, and the music's timing is a little off, but we really enjoyed doing it. Hopefully a few more people will hear about us as well.

Cambridge Lindy Hoppers Unite!

2006-09-06T11:59:00.000+01:00

Over the past couple of weeks we've been working on launching a website for our new student society, Cambridge Lindy Hoppers. We're hoping this group will catalyse new interest in Lindy Hop in Cambridge, and we're planning to start classes with social dancing next month.

Justin and Sara

2006-08-23T19:31:00.000+01:00

This week we were visited by Justin and Sara. Below are just a few of the 700+ photos taken mostly by Justin during the week. They spent a few days here in Cambridge before we headed down to London to hang out with Dozka, Heidi & Ian and Simon & George. Visiting London means we actually got to go social dancing, which we've been missing recently. We also finally got to go punting when the weather improved on Tuesday evening, and it was worth the wait.

Gothenburg and Kungshamn

2006-08-08T16:32:00.000+01:00

My last post was a bit short on detail wasn't it? Perhaps I should explain. Every year (well almost) we go to the Herrang Dance Camp in Sweden. This year was my 6th at Herrang, and Lotte's 4th. The only recent year we've missed is 2003, and I can't remember why that was -- probably we'd already done too much travel that year! We're already planning to be there again next year.

More photos, including of Gothenburg and Kungshamn, here.

Herrang and Stockholm

2006-08-07T15:30:00.000+01:00

Here are a few photos from Herrang and Stockholm. We've just returned from our trip this morning. It was a really fantastic holiday and involved an awful lot of dancing and an awful lot of sleeping, with some sightseeing in between. I'll post some from the second part of the trip (in Gothenburg and Kungshamn) shortly.

Dublin and Norwich

2006-07-19T15:50:00.000+01:00

The past two weekends have been spent away, with Lotte assisting Bill to teach workshops in Dublin and Norwich. The photo is actually from Dublin, although you wouldn't necessarily know it. The group was really fantastic and learnt an awful lot in two days. The workshop in Norwich was very different -- part of a swing, tango and salsa "fusion" weekend. It had mixed success in the sense that their was a lot of learning but not much actual fusion between the different dance styles. I took part in a tango class and marvelled at the technical skills of the teachers. The fundamental concepts were very similar to Lindy Hop, but more emphasis was put on keeping everything on one level in tango instead of "sinking into the floor". When I took a step I was warned about "collapsing" my legs. I didn't take part in many classes however. For the most part, I did my own thing at these weekends. In Dublin this consisted of finishing my thesis and watching The Da Vinci Code on my laptop, as well as getting a good look around town. The city is beautiful, and the wide suburban expanse by the bay reminded me of home.

In Norwich the experience was quite unusual. We were staying at Bylaugh Hall (pronounced Beela Hall), an amazing restoration in progress of a rural mansion that was requisitioned during WWII by the RAF. There are still all kinds of temporary wartime structures such as bomb shelters standing near the house, all overgrown with vines and rusting. The building itself had become decrepit before restoration work started 6 years ago, and when you walk through some of the partly restored areas you can still see dead vines clinking to the pillars. It's now used as an arts and culture venue, and is hired out regularly for weddings and parties. We were treated to gourmet dining and luxury accommodation, all of which was very much appreciated after a hard slog for both of us. Lotte's been invited to teach with Bill on a more permanent basis in Europe, with the next set of workshops in a couple of months.

Another podcast

2006-07-14T13:17:00.000+01:00

I forgot to mention that I recorded another presentation and posted it as a podcast on The Zotcast recently. Check it out.

It's finished.

2006-07-13T12:34:00.000+01:00

Phew. A long journey has finally come to an end. The work for my MA I began in 1997 (yes, 9 years ago) has been completed with the finalisation of my thesis. If you're curious, you can read it here: The roles actors perform. Of course, I could still crash and burn if the examiners don't like it, but I live in hope. I'm just happy it's over!

Ice creams in front of Kings

2006-06-29T10:40:00.000+01:00

Ko and Pascal visited us earlier this month, but this photo of them eating ice creams with Lotte in front of Kings College didn't make it off my phone until yesterday.

Meet the Parents

2006-05-25T15:54:00.000+01:00

Last weekend Lisa, Mum and Dad headed over to Paris for a few nights before heading to Prague, and then on to Switzerland and Holland. Lotte and I picked up Mum and Dad at the airport in Amsterdam while Lisa visited her old friends Jean-Pierre and Christine in Switzerland. One of the aims was for Mum and Dad to meet Lotte's Mum in Zeeland, so we hired a car and headed down for the day.

Mum, Dad and Lisa in England

2006-05-12T13:09:00.000+01:00

Captain Simon in Cambridge

2006-05-12T13:06:00.000+01:00

Another Zotcast?!

2006-04-26T12:41:00.000+01:00

Today I discovered there's actually another Zotcast, at a site called MacZot, which is giving away one of my favourite Mac Applications, SubEthaEdit by CodingMonkeys. I also learnt that SubEthaEdit gets its name from HHG2TG, also a favourite of mine:
"It's from Douglas Adams' a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The reporters of the guide submit their entries using the SubEthaNet (interestingly enough the Ethernet wasn't yet available in time of writing of the HHGG) - therefore we named our editor SubEthaEdit in honor of Douglas Adams' great work." How weird is that?

My first Podcast

2006-04-25T13:10:00.000+01:00

I created a podcast of a presentation I did at CARET last week. You can view it on The Zotcast.

"Brainport" turns tongues into eyes

2006-04-25T13:05:00.000+01:00

This is amazing. ABC News is reporting that scientists are looking at the use of a specialised device that allows you to see using sensors connected to your tongue. "By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish." While the research seems to be focused on military uses, they've also found that it can allow a blind person to catch a ball, and might be useful in treating vestibular disorders. "In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics." Read more.

Rollercoaster Month

2006-04-24T09:33:00.001+01:00

A lot has happened since my last post -- some good, some not so good. People have been asking me to update, so I'll try to summarise the biggest news here. Sorry if this post is short, and I hope to post more regularly soon. First of all, we received the extremely sad news that my sister Kirsty lost her baby, Matilda. We felt the distance between Australia and the UK more keenly over that period than we have before, and it was upsetting not to be able to be at the service.

Some good news after that however, when I asked Lotte to marry me and she said yes! The entire story about the proposal will have to wait for now, but it was a wonderful day, and we're planning for a big engagement party in October in Utrecht, and a wedding about a year later in Melbourne. Mum and Dad then decided they'd push their UK visit forward to May, so we were starting to feel a bit more positive about things. Then more sadness: we got the news that Lotte's mum is ill and will need an operation in early May, so we're currently making plans to be in Holland for her recovery. However the initial signs are good, which is a big relief. For Lotte and I, life goes on and we're both fine and looking forward to Mum and Dad's visit.

Devil of a Holiday

2006-03-23T16:27:00.000Z

The weekend in Hamburg was terrific. We had possibly the best Lindy hosts in the entire world, Arne and Fabian, who made sure to check with us on our breakfast preferences before we left, and then greeted us with a smile on arrival in Hamburg. They have a really interesting, large apartment at the top of a very steep spiralling staircase in a building in a handy part of the city. Hopefully they will get to Cambridge (or maybe even Melbourne?) one day so that we can return the favour. Lotte had a baptism of fire into the international lindy hop teaching world, with 12 hours of teaching over 2 days assisting Bill. The advanced classes were quite a decent level, so she had her work cut out for her, and she did an amazing job. At the end of the weekend they had them in the palm of their hands, and the students were all starting to really get it. I enjoyed the opportunity of a weekend with no responsibilities apart from doing a bit of DJing and having fun. I also met a DJ with perhaps the most astounding collection of beautiful swing music I've ever met -- Swingin' Swanee. This woman is a professional, and it shows. Bill, Ellen and I took her on in the DJ Battle and never stood a chance. I heard she owns around 4,000 albums, most of which were in her personal vinyl collection. She has only fairly recently started using CDs to DJ. I highly recommend getting hold of her CD collections Wild Party, Devil's Holiday, and That's Rhythm from Ceraton.

Frozen Hamburgers

2006-03-17T13:32:00.000Z

This weekend we're off to Hop In The Spring in Hamburg, Germany. It looks like a fun weekend, but I'm wondering a bit about the name. It's below freezing in Hamburg right now, and the forecast is for snow, snow/rain, and snow. That doesn't sound like spring to me. This is sure to be a test of my not-very-snow-friendly shoes, especially because they will be doubling as my dance shoes. Hmmm...

First day on the job

2006-03-10T16:30:00.000Z

Had a bad day at work? A friend sent me this telling example of a tough first day on the job.

Parkside

2006-03-04T11:15:00.000Z

After a very sad start to the week, we were really glad to have some good news yesterday. Lotte has got a job! She'll be working as a Cover Supervisor (teaching assistant) at a fantastic school called Parkside Community College, right in the middle of Cambridge. She's overjoyed because the school is particularly good and the staff were really nice. They have a fantastic media arts programme and have dance and drama as part of the curriculum, which is what was important to Lotte. We've been looking at the website and hoping they would advertise something Lotte could apply for since before we left Australia. As if that wasn't enough, on the same day I found out I'll be getting a new Macbook Pro. Tonight our friends Simon and George are coming up to visit us from London, and we're going to celebrate Lotte's new job by going out to dinner.

Mr Squiggle

2006-02-28T19:20:00.000Z

Last night we received news that our beloved cat, Mr Squiggle lost his short battle with liver cancer and passed away peacefully on Sunday. We're going to put together a collage of photos of him over the years, but for now, we've just got this page. It's very sad, but it's great to know that Squiggs was in such good care with Mum and Dad, and enjoyed his time over the past couple of months. We were fortunate that we knew he was not well before we left Australia, so we got to say our goodbyes properly. Lotte says that if he's in heaven, he's probably walking on God's pillow and waking him up at 3am. Here's to that thought.

Our first visitor

2006-02-24T00:01:00.000Z

This week we played host to our first visitor -- Lotte's mum, who visited us from Holland. Happily our tiny flat seems up to the task, thanks to a newly acquired inflatable mattress. On the weekend we again had very nice weather, and we made the most of it with a long walk into town and then to Grantchester. We had lunch at The Orchard Tea Gardens. Don't be fooled by the sunny weather in the photos, it was pretty cold by the time we left and the sun was a little lower in the sky. But it was really nice sitting outside and taking in the scenery.

Goodnight and goodluck, sweetheart

2006-02-14T17:59:00.000Z

We spent last weekend exhausting ourselves on the dance floor at Goodnight Sweetheart in Hertfordshire. It was a fun weekend for us because we hadn't had much dancing in a long while. The weekend included workshops from Steven & Virginie and Peter & Giselle, among others. I think my favourite thing for the whole weekend was the classes from Peter & Giselle. Really great. The huge, gigantic, spectacular World Championship Battle of the DJs turned out to be rather disappointing. Sound systems that didn't work, a strange setup, stressed organisers, and guess how many songs we played? 3! Even the final two only got to play a total of 6 songs. The winner in a very good field was Alf from Norway who did an excellent job in these difficult circumstances, I must say. He gets to buy himself a ticket to Canada (if he can afford it) as a prize. Hmmm. Still, it was great to get away for a while, and even more terrific to make some new friends and catch up with our great mate Dozka. She did us proud by making it through to the semi finals of the DJ Battle too. That's better than I did, that's for sure.

An awful lot is still going on here as we settle in. The big news for us is that Lotte's found an ad for a job that really sounds like her, so she's putting some time into preparing to apply. Keep your electronic fingers crossed, folks. She won't know for a few weeks yet how she does, though. Work here for me is going well. I've had time to get to look at some things that I know will help me in the next year, including updating my knowledge on tools for qualitative research. In the running are Nvivo 7, Atlas.ti, and a Mac-only thing called TAMS Analyzer. I'm going to try the last of these over the next short while becuase I can run it on my machine and it has a limited feature set (an advantage for my needs, perhaps).

Today jeff pointed out this demo of Multitouch (14Mb, Quicktime), a gestural interface project that looks absolutely amazing. Also see this article and this page about the project. That's exactly the sort of thing I heard Alan Kay talking about in 1994. It definitely takes a long time for these ideas to come to fruition.

Steven Hawking and Sir Humphrey

2006-02-03T21:56:00.000Z

Namedropping has got to be one of the most common pastimes at Cambridge, if my first week of work here is anything to go by. On Sunday we were walking between the city centre and Granchester Meadow and I looked up to see Steven Hawking directly in front of us on the path. I only realised it was actually him right as we were walking past him, but it was incredibly cool to see him just tooling around campus. Then today we went down to the Judge Business School for my first look at an actual Cambridge class in progress. It was a role-play simulation about the privatisation of British electricity in the 1980s. But this was a role-play with a difference. They'd invited a couple of VIPs to take part, including Lord Wilson of Dinton, who played the role of Permanent Secretary to the Department of Environment. If you're a fan of Yes Minister, Permanent Secretary was the role that Sir Humphrey played in that series. The thing is, Lord Wilson was the real one. It added a certain sense of realism to the whole thing, I have to say.

The walk to work

2006-01-31T22:16:00.000Z

Hello Cambridge

2006-01-27T21:51:00.000Z

And here's the new flat in Cambridge. We were really impressed with how big it feels, and it still feels brand new. We're only the second tenants since it was built in 2004. Lotte's demonstrating how to make a chicken stir fry with our new stirfry pan from Tesco, which we ate on our new plates from Tesco. In fact just about everything we've bought so far (including our groceries) has been from Tesco. It's not our first choice to support a giant megastore chain, but well, we've got a limited choice at the moment and it really does have everything. We've made what seems like dozens of trips there already, stuffing our little back packs full every time.

The place was fully furnished, so the fridge, book case, couch, kitchen setting and desk were all waiting for us. The best thing about the place is the floor, which is some kind of faux wood and will probably come in pretty handy when we want to practice dancing.

Probably the most surprising thing was the bedroom seems an awful lot bigger than at our place in Melbourne. It could be because the bed is only a double, but it really does feel pretty big. Both rooms have windows onto a courtyard, which has a bike shed on one side that is always crammed to the gills with bikes. Lotte was pretty happy about that.

Today's major Tesco purchase was a micro stereo system, bought mostly based on being the cheapest one we could find that had audio input, so that we can use AirTunes. Wouldn't be without it. It's all plugged in and pumping out the tunes now.

Byebye Melbourne

2006-01-27T21:34:00.000Z

Apologies for the slight break in transmission. We've been pretty busy moving out of our place in Melbourne and, then into our new place in Cambridge. We took just a couple of snaps before we left to remind us of the old place. This one was taken at our farewell party on the Monday night before we left. A word of warning: if you're ever moving overseas and you have your farewell party 48 hours before departure you're going to have a lot of cleaning up to do, and you might consider moving most of your furniture beforehand. We got out of it without too much trouble by giving away just about everything we possibly could to our friends as they left the party. People left with all sorts of items, including chocolates, kitchen utensils, cricket bats and ancient technological clutter.

One last look at our little house. It looks so sunny looking back on it. We'll be back soon, little house! Honest.

Best Laid Plans: Part 2

2005-12-20T01:02:00.000Z

What was I saying about life not going as planned? Last night my brother was rushed into surgery to have his gall bladder (along with a 1.5 cm stone) removed. Well, "rushed" is a strictly figurative term in this case because he was actually kept waiting in pre-op for about 4 hours because of an emergency case. But they had only diagnosed the gallstone the day before and had him into theatre last night at about 8pm. I was there when he was wheeled back up to his ward to see him give his victory point of the finger and smile as best he could through an oxygen mask. I know what it feels like when you're waking up from being under -- those drugs are actually pretty good and you feel very relieved that it's all over. Despite being pretty groggy he was joking around so much we had to struggle not to wake up the other patients.

We've decided that with news of Oma's stready progress we can stick to our initial plan of leaving on January 11. We'll probably just change our side-trip plans to get to Amsterdam earlier and stay a little longer. This will mean we can proably just get everything organised before our departure, although I have to say it's getting pretty tight.

Best Laid Plans

2005-12-14T08:26:00.000Z

Life doesn't always go as planned. Just when we thought we were getting on top of our plans to leave, we learnt that Lotte's Grandma (Oma) has taken ill after a fall. It's now quite serious -- she was admitted to hospital yesterday and had another fall today. Of course Lotte needs to be there for her Oma and really all we can do at the moment is think about how it would be possible for her to do that. We're now contemplating leaving just after Christmas, and Lotte may even have to go sooner if worst comes to worst. We just hope we get some better news soon.

BSG on iTMS

2005-12-08T05:31:00.000Z

So my wish has come true. Battlestar Galactica is now available for download on the iTunes Music Store. Now if they only made video content available to countries other than the US, they would have something just as revolutionary as Bittorrent, but completely legitimate. And a whole new way of making money through online distribution without the huge cost. I hope the studios figure that out quickly.

BPPV

2005-12-08T03:14:00.000Z

Yesterday was I took one of the last steps in my quest for some answers about my dizziness. At least one of the last steps I will take before I leave for the UK. I went and saw a Neurologist. He was very thorough, and gave me a bunch of different tests as well as some I had already done. I gave him my whole history and he spent quite a while going through some other questions. He's diagnosed me with something called BPPV -- Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. He's pretty definite about it. The way he described it was that one of my ears has got some little crystals in it, almost certainly because of the vestibular neuritis / viral labyrinthitis. I found a more detailed explanation on this page.

The ear that works tends to "push" me towards the ear that doesn't work, resulting in spinning or movement. Anyway he reckons I need to try some home treatment exercises, which are also described on the page above. He also reckons that it works for almost all people within like a week, and that it probably won't come back! I hope he's right.

No Conference For You

2005-12-08T03:07:00.000Z

I never got a reply to my request to attend ASCILITE this year, so I guess that meant no. The paper that I didn't present went down well, though, I hear! It was presented by the first author. It's sad though -- the first time I haven't been given support to attend this conference. I know it sounds like sour grapes, but it really does make me feel like my decision to find another job was worthwhile. Clearly they don't see professional development as a big priority where I am now, and particularly the academic kind.

Dining Al Fresco

2005-12-06T09:01:00.000Z

Last night I was feeling like crap, so Lotte decided to cook up a really nice summer meal while I slept, and when I awoke she'd set up a table outside for us to enjoy our meal in the fading sunshine.
Our poor little courtyard is looking a little worse for wear at the moment, but it was very pleasant just to eat in the open air. The house was way too hot. After we'd stared at the overgrown weeds taking over the carefully planted herbs and natives, Lotte decided we really needed to attack them right then and there. We've probably got a good day's work to get the rest done but we did make a start.

Halogen globes are dangerous

2005-12-03T13:07:00.000Z

Okay, this is beyond a joke. For the THIRD time one of our halogen globes has just burst for no reason, and this time it really hurt. I had just entered the smallest room in the house and about 10 seconds into a leak heard a loud *pop* and felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck. A split second later a shower of hot glass hit the ground all around me. One of the pieces had lodged itself into my neck and I could smell my hair burning. Not happy. I'm going to figure out who makes these globes and write them a letter. Something ain't right.

Flurry of plans

2005-11-23T13:30:00.000Z

Tonight Lotte and I registered for Goodnight Sweetheart in February and the London Lindy Exchange in March. Places tend to sell out of these things in the UK we've been told, so it was time to commit. Also I found out I've been picked to represent Australia in the 3rd annual World DJ Championships at GNSH, which is going to be huge fun. And just yesterday I got a casual invitation up to the International Centre for Research on Learning at the University of Dundee in Scotland. I might take them up on that offer to do a presentation of some sort. We've also planned our first side-trip to Holland, only 6 days after our arrival in the UK! The air fares are amazing -- for 100 GBP we get there and back, and that's including insurance. Handy.

We got the flat

2005-11-19T07:55:00.000Z

We found out today that we got the flat we applied for, which is on the ground floor in the newly built West Cambridge university residencies, close to the Cavendish Laboratory. If the university map is to scale, it seems to be around a mile west of the city centre. The floor plan makes it look pretty small, but we actually measured up our current living room/kitchen and it's almost exactly the same size, which put our minds at ease a bit. The big difference will be that we'll have hardly any room for storage, and no spare room for visitors. Still, there are a couple of desk areas and we won't have to store years of stuff with us. It should be pretty good.

Beaming Up

2005-11-05T20:16:00.000Z

Since getting over the initial shock of our impending trans-hemispheric move, we've started to notice our perspective shift. Before we were here in Melbourne and thinking about what it would be like to be overseas, and all the implications for family, friends, and work. Now, even though we're here in Melbourne in a physical sense, our minds are already on the way to England.

Not only are we dealing with the issues of setting up bank accounts, arranging visas, accommodation, and travel -- we're also slowly beginning to consider all the human connections that are important, both with people in Europe and people here. We're conscious of spending time with family and friends while we're still here. And we're in daily contact with friends and family in England and Holland respectively, talking about everything from airport pick-ups to who has some tea-towels and crockery we can "borrow".

All of this gives us this strange sensation of seeing our lives here as though we've suddenly jumped outside the goldfish bowl. We keep noting how cheap groceries are here (like it didn't occur to us before) and spending time in the sunshine like it's our last chance. Stupid, really, but we just can't escape the feeling that our cognitive epicentre has already started teleporting to the other side of the planet.

The Whole Story

2005-10-27T13:53:00.000+01:00

Back in June & July when we visited Europe, Lotte and I started talking seriously about the idea of spending an extended stay there. We'd actually been talking about it since our previous trip when we visited Zurich and thought how fantastic it would be to live there. But this time we were talking about the practicalities rather than the dreams -- if we wanted to make this happen, how would we do it exactly?

We figured out pretty quickly that the biggest hurdle would be for me to get a visa and a job. Lotte has excellent English and holds an EU passport, which makes everything pretty simple for her in many countries in Europe. It turns out that Switzerland is one of the most difficult places to move to in the world, and not even EU people can live and work there easily.

It didn't take long for us to start thinking about the UK. It's close to France, Holland and Sweden, and it has the distinct advantage of being a good place for an Australian to find work. It also happens to have a lot of universities.

When we got home, Lotte just asked me one day about where exactly I would like to live and work if I had my choice. The answer was obvious but I hadn't really given it much thought until then. Cambridge. It's about a year ago now that my supervisor was over in the UK and visited the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) at Cambridge. He came back with a lot of good things to say about it. The interesting thing is that they were clearly interested in what we are doing at Melbourne as well, because in some ways our work is complementary as well as overlapping. The background of CARET is as a research unit, whereas CDS (where I work now) is made up mostly of people involved in the production of multimedia.

More recently, apparently, CARET has started to turn its attention more to projects involving the development and delivery of materials for courses -- the sort of thing we do here all the time. At the same time we are attempting to bring more of an applied research model to what we are doing here.

In one of those really fortuitous turns of events I just decided to do a search of jobs in the higher education and see what turned up. The second job ad I looked at was actually from CARET and the Faculty of Education at Cambridge. It was quite bizarre -- these jobs don't come up very often. The job description was a very close match to my background.

I applied in late August, and didn't hear anything for about a month. I actually only found out that I was shortlisted last Monday, and the interview was on Wednesday night. Despite some technical problems (the videoconference didn't go according to plan) I thought it went pretty well. I answered all the questions and seemed to get along well with the interviewers.

After the interview I had a strange deflated feeling -- perhaps because I had hardly slept the night before with nervousness, but also because there was really nothing I could do after that point. I mentally prepared myself for the possibility that I might get the job, but I had also didn't expect too much because I knew the other candidates would be strong.

On Friday night we got home late and got the news by email. It said that they had given the job I applied for to another candidate. Again I had that sinking feeling in my stomach, along with the sort of immediate acceptance that I had tried my best. But then I kept reading.

The next sentence said that they had been impressed with my interview and my background, and wanted to offer me a different, even better, position. I was absolutely stunned. Not only was I going to Cambridge, they were offering me a new position that they were creating just for me, and it would be 100% within CARET, which is exactly where I wanted to work. I had got even more than I'd asked for!

Lotte and I have been so excited since getting the news we have hardly had time to think about anything else. The position is for 12 months in the first instance. We'll move to Cambridge in January. So if anyone knows of some good accommodation in or around Cambridge, let me know!

Cambridge!!

2005-10-22T09:46:00.000+01:00

Well, this one is a biggie. We found out late last night that I've been offered a position at CARET at the University of Cambridge, starting in January. I don't have time to tell the whole story right now but needless to say we are both incredibly excited and will be rushing to get everything in order before we leave. Wow!

Poor neglected blog

2005-10-19T12:33:00.000+01:00

Okay, okay, so I haven't been updating much lately. Well, at all. It's just that I don't have a lot to talk about. Well, there's news, but for various reasons I'm not able to talk about it here yet. Maybe more soon.

I can say that I've been very busy lately. At the start of October I took over the coordinator role for my group and it's meant quite a bit of extra work behind the scenes, on top of my normal project load. Some of it is boring, but some of it is quite interesting as well.

It's hard to believe that we're almost in November already and that MLX is only just around the corner. It's a strange feeling not to have to worry about how the registrations are going, or to attend volunteer meetings at every spare moment.

The labyrinthitis continues, unfortunately, and on Monday I went in for an MRI, which was actually a much more greuling experience than I had imagined. Nothing at all like a CT Scan, which was pretty easy. The main difference is that the whole machine shudders and makes a huge racket, which makes you feel like you have your head inside a jet engine while it's starting up. It's very offputting.

I also wasn't prepared for the strange feeling of the magnet sort of scanning around... it's a very odd sensation and sort of made me think of weird science fiction brain probing experiments. The stragest feeling was my eyeballs sort of jiggling around as though they were being buffeted by an invisible force (which they probably were). I thought magnets only had an effect on metal! Perhaps it was just the vibrations of the machinery as it clunks around.

Whatever it was, I finished up with a king sized headache and my eyes were watering from movement. The funniest thing was they ask you to bring along a CD of your favourite music, which I did, but you can't hear a bloody thing. First they shove huge earplugs in your ears, and then they turn up the volume so you can just hear it. But as soon as the scanning starts, you can't hear anything else at all. I got up to find the medicos talking about what great dance music I'd chosen and smiling broadly, so at least someone was happy.

Horoscope time

2005-09-14T13:03:00.000+01:00

At a meeting at work today one person was talking about horoscopes, and as a result mine was read aloud.

Libra
The prevailing influence brings a strong masculine energy into the day and may increase your sexual appetite. Now that's not a bad thing, so plan a bit of fun tonight. But through the day you shouldn't flirt or that may be taken the wrong way! Keep your energy firmly focussed on achieving your goals.

Now, when they got to the part in bold of course everyone was in hysterics. I started to turn a nice shade of bright pink and everyone wanted to know what starsign Lotte was. Naturally the next thing that was read out was hers:

Virgo
Happy Birthday Virgo: This should be the perfect day to attain a goal, make a dream come true or fulfil an ambition. All things can be realised when you take a stand, be courageous and work for your own benefit. This is not a hostile thing; you just want to know you've done it alone! Plan a hot and sultry romantic night if that's possible!

Of course they had to add that last line just to embarass me in front of my colleages, didn't they?

New MLX Chapter

2005-09-07T09:44:00.000+01:00

Well, I haven't been able to post about it until now but it's finally public. We're not going to be coordinating MLX this year. It was a tough decision to make, but we're both relieved too. I think it's going to be really different for both of us to be there as attendees and just enjoy the vibe, and the new team is going to be great. I'm not quite sure if they know what they've gotten themselves into, but that's probably a good thing. Here's our announcement, made yesterday night.

How BSG Killed TV

2005-08-29T10:50:00.000+01:00

Further to my previous post, see this article from Mindjack if you need any more convincing or if you just want to know some more details. Download the presentation this article is based on with Bittorrent here. The end of the broadcast age is nigh, I tell ya.

BSG Season 2

2005-08-23T12:55:00.000+01:00

So now I will turn my attention to something far more interesting, and certainly more enjoyable. The new Battlestar Galactica. Season 2 is now upon us. At least, if you are in the US or have access to recordings from the US. There is no indication that any of the Australian free to air networks have picked up Season 2, despite (or perhaps due to) Network Ten's botched airing of the first series down under. So local BSG fans have no idea if or when it will arrive here.

Enter peer 2 peer networks like Bittorrent. Newspapers are reporting that Australian TV viewers are increasingly turning to downloading episodes of series like BSG out of frustration. Speaking hypothetically of course, if I was to engage in any bittorrenting, I know I would still be keen to watch a series like BSG on free to air TV. I'm a big enough fan to even go to the expense of purchasing the entire series on DVD. I'm already planning to get the first series on DVD and I've watched that through a couple of times now. Just about all the other BSG fans I know are similarly committed to owning the series on DVD. It might just be a BSG thing, I don't know.

What it says to me is that networks will be increasingly under pressure to air series that enjoy international success more quickly. It just can't be sustainable for Australian networks to withold episodes for 12 months or more when your average 10 year old can download them from the US the day after their release. Sure it's a hassle to download, and it's bandwidth that you pay for, but if the alternative is waiting indefinitely, people will do it.

Anyway, all that being said, I am really enjoying Season 2 of BSG. Not only is the plot in this series more involved than the last one, the characters are being revealed in more detail, which is the most engaging thing of all for me. I heartily recommend it to anyone, even if you have no interest at all in Sci Fi. Suffice to say that the issues explored are very relevant to today's headlines, and also include the sort of timeless themes of a real masterpiece. I just cannot speak highly enough of the writing, the direction and the acting in this show. If you don't know what I'm talking about, track down the New Battlestar Galactica mini series in your local video shop -- it's easy to find and it watches just like a movie. You'll be hooked.

Blogsick

2005-08-23T11:40:00.000+01:00

Today I have been thinking about why I haven't been blogging much lately. It's simple really. I'm sick of hearing myself whine about being sick. It seems to be the main topic of conversation everywhere and with everyone, and it seems to affect just about every aspect of life. So I can't be bothered writing about it here any more. I want to be over it. I want to just put it behind me like it was last week's news. So I think I will.

Secret to Bush's success

2005-08-12T14:14:00.000+01:00

I've finally found out what Bush's secret is. "When people hear the President speak, frankly they think he's really stupid. But what people don't realize is that there is a genius behind the stupidity". See for yourself.

The 3 Worst Things About Day Surgery

2005-08-09T14:57:00.000+01:00

You might think that going into hospital at 6.45am for a 'day procedure' requiring general anaesthetic and swallowing a camera so someone can snip some bits of your stomach and oesophagous out for tests would be bad enough. Indeed you might be right. However I've discovered that the three worst things about day surgery aren't really directly to do with surgery at all.

1. Trying to sleep the night before. For someone who has never been under a general in his life I think I was pretty cool calm and collected about the whole thing. But it was just like going on a big trip -- you just don't want to miss that plane. So even though I got to sleep by about 10.30pm I kept waking up... 4am, 4.30am, 5.00am, 5.15am, 5.35am... etc. etc. The most annoying thing? We got to the hospital ahead of time and were directed by a security guy up to the doctor's suite where we waited for 30 mins. When nobody arrived we finally found out we had been told the wrong thing and had to go to Admissions, one level down. Thanks, security guy.

2. Getting your car towed. Yes, I was sleepy and distracted, and it was dark when we arrived. However, it was still pretty stupid to misread the sign on Victoria Parade. I think I only read the part where it said we could park for 2 hours from 9.30am. Not the part that said TOW AWAY ZONE 7am-9.30am. Our brand new car is now sitting in a pound somewhere in the city.

3. Daytime TV sucks. Man, I always forget just how much. When Oprah Winfrey and Judge Judy are the highlights of the day's viewing, "you got problems". Talk to the hand because the face ain't listening.

Anyway the doc says everything looks normal in my gullet, so that's a positive.

New Video

2005-07-29T19:09:00.000+01:00

Check out this amazing new instructional video: How to dance like a white guy.

Back home

2005-07-24T21:35:00.000+01:00

Well, we arrived home to a cold and rainy Melbourne yesterday evening and it's been a lazy Sunday doing very little but recovering from the journey home. I'll keep posting pictures from the rest of the trip in the next few days.

Unfortunately I have a lot to do. Last week the server hosting all my sites and my email was hacked badly. Slydog is moving everything over to a new host and hopefully we will have things back up and running soon, but in the meantime SwingTalk is down along with the MLX site and all the others. My email is only accessible through a web client right now and I'm not actually sure if all my mail will be there when it's back up. Slightly scary.

Still, it's good to be home. I didn't actually miss much in Australia while I was away because I was having too much fun, but I did miss my cat, Mr Squiggle. He didn't miss me at all, I'm sure. As long as he's fed, he's happy.

Friesland

2005-07-09T06:30:00.000+01:00

We left Zeeland on Saturday morning and took the train to meet up with our friends Daan and Thomas at the house in Utrecht. That afternoon we drove 2 hours north to the province of Friesland, where Friesian cows, and the English language originate from. We stayed overnight at Thomas' sister's place in Leeuwarden. It was funny to think that we'd travelled the entire length of the country in less than a day. One thing I noticed about Leeuwarden was that the architecture was different. The churches did not have much decoration and things were in general very sombre and old fashioned.

[g-280116] [g-280117]

We headed back towards Utrecht on Sunday the 3rd of July along the Afsluitdijk, which is an amazing 30km long construction that keeps the north of Holland from being flooded and battered by the ocean. Below you can see a ship coming through one of the lochs in the dyke, and a couple of workers pushing a small rock into place to build the dyke up.

[g-280118] [g-280119]

Zeeland

2005-07-09T06:09:00.000+01:00

Skip forward a few days now to Wednesday the 29th of July -- the day we arrived in Zeeland, Holland. For those who don't know, Zeeland is where New Zealand gets its name (spelt Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch). It's the southernmost province of Holland and is famous for its beaches. We stayed with Lotte's mum and grandma in a very small house (het strandhuisje) right on the sand at Vlissingen. Sort of like a bathing box with mod-cons. I really like this photo of the sunset over the beach. I snapped it from the front of the strandhuisje looking up along the beach just before 10pm. The days are very long right now, with twilight lasting until after 11pm.

[g-280108]

Here's a shot of me right in front of the strandhuisje looking about as relaxed as I can be. I must say it probably looks a tiny bit warmer than it actually was there, but while the wind is bracing, when the sun shines it's very pleasant. I can't say it does much for the temperature of the water though. I went for one swim and it felt about as warm as freshly melted snow.

[g-280110]

One of the really fun things about this beach is that it's actually right at the end of the river that leads to the port at Antwerpe, so about every 2 minutes you see a huge ship only about 1km off the beach. So spotting ships through the binoculars is one of the main passtimes.

[g-280113]

Our other main passtime was playing Yahtzee. Also in the picture are Lotte's mum, dad and grandma (or in Dutch, Oma).

[g-280114]

Hameau du Lac

2005-07-09T05:55:00.000+01:00

Here we have a few shots of us nearby the house in Hameau du Lac. On Saturday we decided to head down to the stream behind the house to see if we could have a swim. It was a bit too green for me to swim but Lotte and Dory had fun on the crocodile.

[g-280094] [g-280093]

Sunday was a funny day that sort of started with a minor disaster but finished in style. Just as Bil was taking our rental car around a tight corner he snagged some sharp bricks beside the road and popped a tyre. We had a brief pitstop before heading on to the beach.

[g-280095]

That night we had, I think, one of the best meals of the whole trip at a restaurant just near Sigean that was recommended to us by Lotte's aunt Anna called the Hotel St. Anne. They did a special 3 course menu for us that included the beautiful fish dish below, all for 17 Euros each. We were the only customers in the place that night and I have no idea why because it was truly gourmet stuff. I believe it starts to get a lot busier in July and August though.

[g-280096]

Eus

2005-07-06T21:41:00.000+01:00

After Castelnou we headed out for a drive to a lake. The plan was to have a swim, but about 5 minutes into our journey we were in the middle of a deluge that turned into a hailstorm. It was very dramatic. We waited by the side of the road until it cleared and then headed on our way. By the time we got to where we were going it was dry and we swam anyway (well, I didn't, but I wasn't feeling like it). Oh yeah, and we ate icecreams.

[g-280104]

On our way back, we found a tiny tiny village on a hilltop called Eus. You pronounce that "UH". We laughed about that for hours. What would you say if someone asks where you live? "Uh... UH". Anyway it was beautiful.

[g-280092] [g-280091] [g-280105]

Castelnou

2005-07-06T18:06:00.000+01:00

These shots are of a beautiful village & chateau called Castelnou, which is about an hour's drive from Sigean. I highly recommend going there. There's a cafe and winery, of course, but the highlights are the views and the buildings dating back to 989AD. The town is now inhabited mostly by artisans who sell to the many visitors. We spent a couple of hours there just taking everything in.

[g-280102] [g-280103] [g-280120] [g-280086]

Just when we started thinking that we were the only non-French tourists there, we ran into this Dutch couple with their dog. Lotte introduced herself and started talking to them before she realised they were Dutch. We all introduced ourselves as "Geoff from Canada, Matt from Australia", etc. until Lotte said "and me and my sister and her boyfriend are from Holland". The Dutch guy smiled and said "We are also from Holland but we are from the REAL Holland!" Then Lotte started to speak to him in Dutch and he realised that she was actually from the real Holland too, so we all laughed.

[g-280087]

And here are some more from Castelnou. The sign was outside a small art/craft marketplace that was deserted. Looks like it belongs in an episode of 'Allo 'Allo.

[g-280088] [g-280089] [g-280090]

The House & Bill at Port La Nouvelle

2005-07-06T17:56:00.000+01:00

Here are a couple of shots taken of Doris at the house at Hameau du Lac. The town's name means "hamlet on the lake" and that's exactly what it is. The house was actually quite a bit bigger than I had imagined from the photos, with three floors and an outside balcony and a living area at the back with a very high ceiling. Dory slept in a loft in the living area. The first photo shows Dory and Lotte in the kitchen getting ready for dinner on Thursday night. The second is Dory posing with a beautiful portrait that Justin painted of her using Nutella on a crepe on Friday morning. Crepes are sold in packages everywhere there.

[g-280112] [g-280085]

This last one is very special because it comes with a story. Later on Thursday night we went to Port la Nouvelle, which is the local resort village on the beach. We were standing on the square watching a musical comedy duo play fishing songs and polkas when Bilby grabbed Lotte for a dance and impressed the locals. Immediately after completing one dance a man in his 60s looked over at Bill and suggested gleefully that he take his wife for a spin. Bill manfully accepted the task and the lady looked like her face was about to explode with excitement as they danced around in circles. The moment captured below is when she was completely overcome and decided she should jump onto Bill and wrap her legs around him. The look on Bilby's face says it all.

[g-280115]

Narbonne

2005-07-06T05:23:00.000+01:00

Later on Thursday we went to check out Narbonne, a much larger city than Sigean with a beautiful square, a market, canals, and a small loch. In the middle of the city is a cathedral. Of course, I have photos of all those things but there's too much to upload so you'll have to make do with this cheesy selection of us walking around the city. Narbonne was definitely my favourite of the bigger cities close to where we were staying. The couple with us in the pics are Justin and Sara (Lotte's sister). We just found out that Sara will be coming to visit us in Australia soon after we get back!

[g-280109] [g-280111] [g-280099] [g-280100] [g-280101]

2005-07-05T04:59:00.000+01:00

We have the luxury of a reliable broadband connection while we're in Utrecht for the next couple of weeks, so it's time to start putting a few photos online. We have about 2,500 to choose from because we pooled all the photos from 7 digital cameras amongst our friends on the France leg of the trip! Needless to say, I've been through and picked only a few from the library.

Starting from the beginning, here are a few shots from Sigean, which is the closest town to Hameau Du Lac where we were staying in France. These were taken on Thursday the 23rd of July -- the day after we arrived in the south of France from Toulouse. Sigean is tiny, with one doglegged main street with tiny alleys leading off it to explore.

[g-280106] [g-280107] [g-280098] [g-280097]

Back in Holland

2005-06-29T21:31:00.000+01:00

It was about a 16 hour drive from Sigean, France to Zeeland, The Netherlands. We're so tired! But it's good to be back in Holland. We dropped in to Ko's place for a cuppa before heading to Ans' to drop off our stuff. Next is a short bike ride down to the beach box where we'll spend the next two nights. I'm looking forward to doing absolutely nothing for a while. Justin gave me a DVD with all the photos everyone took in the South of France leg, so I'll get to uploading some of those while I'm in Holland. Not all of them, though -- there are something like 2000.

Bonjour from Narbonne

2005-06-28T20:53:00.000+01:00

For those who don't know, I'm currently on holiday in Europe. Today is our last day in France before we head up to Holland by car. So far things have been really great (apart from my health, which remains poor). We spent the first two nights in Paris before meeting Bill, Dory and Geoff and taking the train down to Toulouse. One great night in Toulouse (with lots of dancing and not much sleep) left us tired for the car trip down to Hameau du Lac (near Sigean) but it was worth it. We've spent the last week just relaxing and seeing sights in the Sigean, Narbonne and Perpignan region. Lots of castles and beaches and small villages to explore. We have stacks of photos but I don't have time to upload anything right now apart from this one of Lotte being the Eiffel tower.

[g-274468]

Intel inside

2005-06-09T11:35:00.000+01:00

So it's true. Apple is putting Intel chips into Macs from next year. The five stages of Intel Macs has an amusing take on the way it panned out. For the full story, you need to see the Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote.

I've been mulling it over for a week now and I guess I'm starting to see the sense in it. They're not talking about ditching Apple hardware, just about making it faster and cheaper. They're also not talking about another painful OS9 -> OSX type jump. Anything that runs on PPC will still run courtesy of Rosetta, with a 30-40% speed hit that will be at least partly compensated for by the horsepower of the new boxes. And developers are for the most part very positive, meaning that we shouldn't see a return to the days of Copland when developers started leaving in droves. The proof of the pudding will be how smooth the transition is, of course, and how well Apple is able to ride out the inevitable blip in its sales as people wait for the new boxes to arrive in a year's time.

Digital TV ahoy

2005-06-06T12:14:00.000+01:00

Last week I'd pretty much decided that it was time to get a digital set top box to improve our reception at home. Our antenna was blown off the roof soon after I moved in and for various reasons (long story) we've never replaced it. Of course, those little rabbit ears only go so far. Then I learnt that JB Hi Fi was selling set top boxes for $99, so yesterday I went out and got one (a Soniq DVB12). Took 5 minutes to plug in, and it works a treat. Crystal clear TV, with program guides and all. And at that price, you can't go too far wrong.

Thousands hit by train delays

2005-06-06T09:28:00.000+01:00

On the front page of the web edition of The Age today was this Odd Spot article:

A 39-year-old Chinese man, Zhang Xinquan, has put his right ear in an iron clamp device, locked with a long bolt, then pulled a 21.8-tonne train 40 metres with it within four minutes.

Directly underneath was the headline: Thousands hit by train delays. These things amuse me.

Natalie & Yuval make the blog time

2005-06-03T10:05:00.000+01:00

This entry on Screenhead, the online review of "funny shit" accords New York swing dancers Natalie and Yuval new geekly fame by linking directly to a clip of their "Swing Me Brother Swing" routine at the World Swing Dance Invitational. I wonder if they are wondering exactly what hit their server a day or so ago. Dig those aerials.

To drupe or not to drupe

2005-06-03T09:51:00.000+01:00

A few of us are getting peeved again at the amount of time ModBlog has been down lately. I've been toying with the idea of moving my entire blog over to my own drupal installation and offering blog space to friends too.

The positives of Modblog are many. I think the gallery is the most impressive thing about it, but there's also the sense of community generated from the automatic links to other users as they browse your blog. You have a feeling that there is an audience of some sort out there. But I have to say it's a pretty non-vocal one. The only comments that are ever posted here really are from my own IRL friends.

The other features here are nice, but there are mostly equivalents in a drupal world. So really the only major negative of moving to this new blogspace would be the lack of a really good gallery management system. There are drupal-based gallery mods, but they suck by comparison with the one here.

The big upside of moving would be the ability to limit access. No anonymous browsing (unless we want it). This would mean that the audience for the blogs would be limited in size, but the idea would be that it would become a more close and vocal sub-community that we would all feel free to participate in just outside of the public gaze. More of an invitation-only party than a public event.

Slippery Elm

2005-05-30T20:08:00.000+01:00

One of the only good things about feeling unwell for a significant period of time is, of course, the feeling of relief when you have a good day. I caught myself saying to Lotte tonight "I feel so happy when I'm not sick". She just laughed. But it's really what I was feeling.

It's all because of Slippery Elm. By last weekend I'd had enough of feeling nauseous all the time and was getting an increasing amount of indigestion too. It turns out that the uneasy stomach associated with this inner ear infection can result in gastric reflux. Great. So I decided to go off to the local Pharmacist and ask him what I should be doing about it. The answer was to take a strange substance called Slippery Elm after meals. It's just the inner bark of a tree ground up. The stuff comes in capsules, which I just break open and mix into tea or aloe vera juice. It's actually not all that bad tasting and man, it works. So if you're ever feeling sick, look out for this stuff.

Finding Your Passion

2005-05-24T15:41:00.000+01:00

I seem to be waning on the blog entry side of things. No excuses! Instead I'll give a quick update on as many things as possible. First, the building work on our house continues apace. I can hardly believe that I have failed to document the entire process with pictures, but I'll try to get some tonight. Of course, pretty much all there is to see now is a bunch of freshly painted walls looking extremely nice, but anyone who visited our place prior to the repairs should see the improvement. We're both delighted with the quality of the work. They are clearly using very good quality materials and doing the hard stuff like the details as well as the more obvious stuff. They're even repainting walls that didn't need to be repaired at all so that everything matches exactly.

The weekend was quite relaxing. Lotte has been doing quite a few sleepover shifts lately while we save up for our trip, so Squigs and I had a couple of nights to ourselves towards the end of the week. I decided I needed to get a new game for the Xbox to while away those nights and went with a pre-loved copy of Medal of Honour: The Front Line on the recommendation of Thomas from Holland. Not a bad pick up for only $25 I thought, but I haven't really had a chance to play for long yet. I'd like to try it in multiplayer mode but I doubt it would compare to BF 1942 (which rocks on the new iMac G5, by the way).

We went to lunch at Mum and Dad's on Sunday. It was really great to see the famdamly and as a bonus Gran and Uncle Dave were there. Uncle Dave is the funniest uncle ever, I think, and he never fails to crack me up. It's always fun to see Lotte's reactions to his jokes because I know she's thinking about the our particular family's brand of humour. Anyway Lotte had to go to another sleepover shift and I had some time to kill before going to see the Cairo Club at Mayfields, so I went and saw an early evening showing of Star Wars III. The reviews are right. It sucks slightly less than the other two prequals. That's about all I can say about it though. The lego version of the Star Wars characters are more human than these cardboard cut outs if you ask me. It's just so disappointing. I'd vote for Ron Moore to remake the entire series if I could.

Speaking of which, I am really starting to miss Battlestar Galactica. I've tried to keep myself occupied by reading the Battlestar Blog (minus the spoilers) and watching the series again as it went to air. I even read Philip K. Dick's The Simulacra, which I expected to be a good sci fi novel about human identity. It was not. It was a load of complete and utter drivel that I cannot believe is written by the same guy who came up with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which of course was adapted to become Blade Runner. I've read a few works now by Philip K. Dick, and some of them weren't great, but none were as impressively ridiculous as this one. Does anyone out there have recommendations for better stuff by him? I'll be interested to see the film version of A Skanner Darkly. It's a pretty short story so I'm wondering how they'll get a full feature movie out of it actually.

The plot summary of A Scanner Darkly says "Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling." Yeah, maybe it's eerily accurate because apparently one of my favourite sci fi authors was not unknown to illegal substances himself. That helps to explain why an awful lot of the character development in The Simulacra is along those lines. It's not that it's not accurately written, it's just that it doesn't seem to add much to the story. And there are so many little ideas that just don't get followed up in the plot that it feels like a lot of things are happening but there just aren't any real consequences. Even by the end I couldn't really figure out who the main protagonists were let alone start feeling any kind of empathy for them. I've never gotten to the end of a novel before with the feeling like I hadn't gotten to the main story yet. Maybe I'm just missing something. I'm sure I've just offended a lot of hard core sci fi fans, but maybe someone will explain why I'm wrong.

One thing that I must start writing more about here is the theme that seems to link a lot of my interests together: identity. I've noticed that this is the real area that interests me about my thesis, and the related themes about performance, constructing the self, subjectivity, and ontology are really just ways of investigating "the big issue" for me. Gameplay and educational issues like authenticity are definitely of less importance in terms of my interest. That's weird I think because I'm an educational designer who loves games. I've mentioned that Blade Runner (whose main theme is human identity) is my favourite movie, and that BSG gets me for exactly the same reason. The same thing with Total Recall (another Philip K Dick remake as it happens). Clearly I'm not alone in finding this theme of identity compelling, but I do find it interesting to notice that my academic interests have come around to it as well. One of the things that Paul Gruba (co-author of Writing A Better Thesis) says is that you really need to take notice of where your passion lies. Well, I can't write my thesis about Lindy Hop or cricket, so I guess this will have to do.

A challenging week

2005-05-19T10:52:00.000+01:00

No blogging for a few days from me. Sorry about that. I seem to have been a bit to preoccupied with being dizzy to blog, and it all just seemed like more of the same, so I didn't bother. Basically the story for the past few days has been the same -- mild nausea and dizziness with occasional bouts where it becomes too difficult to walk/work/do anything. I went home from work on Tuesday and just had to sleep. Last night I didn't have any symptoms until about 9.30pm, when I started to feel bad, and I just went to sleep early. Woke up feeling okay at 8am. The rest of the morning wasn't so great, but I'm feeling mostly better again now.

Meanwhile the builders continue to cause havoc, but are progressing quickly. They've now put ducting under the house and today seemed to be shaping up to paint our newly repaired hallway wall. This is a very good sign because it hopefully means that there will be less dust around the place -- no more sanding back the new plaster. Until they start work on the other walls at any rate. Lotte picked a good time to have two night shifts because yesterday the dust was all the way to the back of the house (including completely covering one of Lotte's red shoes, turning it white).

Yesterday after some relationship troubles Ursi booked herself on a flight home to Zurich. It was sad to hear that she was leaving early, and when I responded to her message we arranged to meet up for a coffee to say goodbye. Unfortunately Lotte couldn't come because she was at work. Anyway she was in reasonable spirits -- quite philosophical really, and we talked about meeting up again in Herrang. She's still deciding whether she'll come back and study here next year. I hope she does.

With one thing and another this has been a challenging week for us and a lot of our friends. The Swede went in for surgery yesterday on her hip. I spoke to her last night though and she was doing really well. Sounds like the surgery was a big success, but only time will tell for sure. I hope next week will be a better one for everyone.

Goddank voor het winkelwagentje

2005-05-14T17:49:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness for the shopping trolley. That's what Lotte said as we left the Barkly Square shopping centre car park. Something about that shopping centre sets off my labyrinthitis, I tell ya. That's the third time I've had a dizzy attack there this week, and this one was the worst. I literally had to wheel myself around with the shopping trolley. Then I bailed and just sat it out on a chair outside Coles while Lotte finished shopping. We came home and I took a Stemetil (an anti nausea drug) and slept for an hour. I still feel like crap now. What a crazy party animal I am sitting at home at 7.30pm on a Saturday night in my jammies.

Last night was a different story. Again I didn't notice any real ill effects of dancing when we went to the Fun Pit. I definitely wasn't dancing at my best, but I didn't feel dizzy or nauseous. I did feel tired towards the end of the night though. I have this theory that my brain works overtime trying to keep me in balance and it tires me out.

On a cheery note Dory just called and invited us to breakfast tomorrow morning. Last week we did the same and it was really a lot of fun so I am determined to be right by then. The dizzy spells only ever seem to go for a short while anyway. Maybe an hour or two at the outside. Sometimes they are no more than 15 mins long. Also Ursi textmessaged Lotte to ask after me. Awwww.

Sea Legs

2005-05-13T18:21:00.000+01:00

This ear thing is really not a lot of fun. Just when I thought I was feeling really great I had a pretty bad afternoon. This morning I woke up and felt absolutely fine, with no symtoms at all. I got through till around midday before I started feeling bad. I probably had about half an hour of feeling like crap before I cae good again. Then Lotte and I met up for lunch and just before we got there I started feeling bad again. It's really hard to describe the feeling. It's a bit like you've been away on a ship for a week and you're trying to find your land legs again. On top of that every now and then there's a big swell. Only problem is, nothing is actually moving! My stomach feels constantly on the edge while this is happening and I get this sensation of being out of control. If I'm walking, I feel compelled to immediately slow down and have to fight the feeling to continue walking at all.

For the past couple of days I've also felt a dull headache that goes all the way up the back of my neck to the crown and behind my right eye. I decided this was one thing I could try and fix and booked in for a neck massage with our favourite massage therapist, Bernie. He is a true pro, and concentrated entirely on the magic spot in the right side that was sending a shaft of pain along the exact path of my headache. So now at least my head feels a little better.

On a positive note, last night was my first try at dancing since Monday, and I found I was able to dance with absolutely no feeling of dizziness whatsoever. It really seems as though the dizziness is not related to what I'm doing at all. In fact I seem to be more likely (or maybe I notice it more) to suffer a dizzy spell when I'm sitting down for a while. I reckon I'm also more likely to start getting the spells when I'm feeling tired, which makes sense too. Until I start feeling better I am going to try to rest up as much as possible. But I am going to try dancing again tonight.

Permission to dance

2005-05-11T11:41:00.000+01:00

I've been doing some reading about labyrinthitis and all the advice I've seen tells me that I should now be getting back on my feet and moving.

For example, the Vestibular Disorders Association website:
If treated promptly, many inner ear infections cause no permanent damage. In some cases, however, permanent loss of hearing, ranging from barely detectable to total, can result. Your doctor will be able to advise you about the usefulness of hearing aids in your individual case. Permanent damage to the vestibular system can also result. Fortunately, the brain can adapt to damage to the vestibular system, particularly when the damage is partial and/or confined to one side. This adaptation may take days to months, depending on how severe the damage is and how quickly the body is able to recover from the infection. Symptoms of dizziness, difficulty with vision, and imbalance may persist as long as the adaptation is incomplete. This adaptation can only occur if the patient makes an effort to keep moving around despite the symptoms of dizziness and imbalance. Sitting or lying with the head still, while more comfortable, can prolong or even prevent the adaptation process, and should be avoided if at all possible once the worst of the infection is over.

I take this as my permission to dance. I'll have a rest night tonight, but tomorrow I'll be teaching again. Unfortunately I am still experiencing the dizziness today and it can be quite offputting, but it sounds like it's not a good idea to just stop alltogether. Suits me. I find it boring to sit at home anyway. And I feel absolutely fine apart from the nausea and dizziness.

Fletcherising in Cairo

2005-05-10T09:30:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking a lot about a 20s - early 30s themed dance night at MLX this year. The main reason of course is the continuing evidence that Peter Milley's 10 piece Cairo Club Orchestra is one of the most engaging and talented swing era bands playing in Melbourne. On top of that, we have never actually heard CCO play at MLX, and there is an increasing interest in big band music from an earlier era -- particularly that of the early 1930s. The downsides of such an idea are few, but one of them is that many dancers find the tempos of the hotter stomps and charlestons to be too difficult, and the durges are too slow for some people. So it's this feeling that the night could be frustrating for some dancers.

My first thoughts are to try to talk to Milley about the idea of tailoring a song list for Lindy Hoppers. We usually do that anyway when hiring a band for MLX. But then I got to thinking about the idea of asking if he would consider looking for arrangements of particular tunes that I know the dancers would go for. The trick is that the line up CCO uses is very consistent and almost always includes a banjo, giving the band that very particular Charleston/dixie feel that only a banjo can. I know that they use a guitar sometimes though. And maybe their banjo player can also play guitar, or they can use another guitarist on certain arrangements.

Anyway in my fantasy world they would transcribe or find arrangements for the Fletcher Henderson classics like Big John's Special, Christopher Columbus, Wrappin It Up (The Lindy Glide), The Sugarfoot Stomp, The Henderson Stomp, and The Moten Stomp. These are all particular favourites of mine. I'd also be interested in talking to him about some Chick Webb and Jimmie Lunceford stuff of course, but I don't know if they would go for it. Webb's Strictly Life, Go Harlem and (oh my) Harlem Congo, and Lunceford's Four or Five Times, Lunceford Special, Tain't What You Do, Harlem Shout and For Dancers Only would all be great. Food for thought.

The swizzle

2005-05-09T11:47:00.000+01:00

One ingredient turned out to be more important than all of the others in that recipe. The swizzle. Turns out I have viral labyrinthitis, which explains why I was feeling so crap this morning. Basically it's extreme dizziness and nausea caused by a virus getting into your inner ear. It got worse after I posted, and I had a bunch of dizzy spells over the weekend so it all fell into place when the doc peered inside my ear canal. I can't work like this. I have felt ill all day and dizzy for most of it. So it's off home (or somewhere) to rest, a course of antibiotics, and anti-nausea drugs for a couple of days.

Recipe for extreme sleepiness

2005-05-09T08:06:00.000+01:00

Ingredients:
1 Friday night dance night (5am or later)
1 Renovation preparation box-moving exercise (start 10am or earlier)
1 Saturday night birthday party (4am or later)
1 Breakfast with friends (start 10 am or earlier)
1 Contact improvisation class (2 hours or more)
1 Mother's Day family meal
1 Host film premier with extremely fast dancing involved (12 am or later)
1 Early morning commencement of renovations (7am start)

Instructions:
Take all of the above and stick them together in one weekend. Garnish with the remains of a cold and swizzle.

That twenties feeling

2005-05-08T21:35:00.000+01:00

Tonight was the premiere of the SwingCity DVD. The band was the Cairo Club Orchestra, and we've just arrived home tired and aching and covered in sweat. Cairo Club is an authentic 20s dance band, and there really is nothing quite like it in Melbourne. They play charts you won't hear anywhere else, like 'My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes' and a really beautiful version of 'The Mooch', which remains one of my favourite songs. The quality of the band is such that every soloist is compelling without dominating the arrangments. I also absolutely love the trumpets in this band, of which the bandleader Peter Milley is the lead. They always amaze me with their precision, and they make a lot of use of mutes, which I always love.

The DVD went down very well, and we finally have our first batch of re-authored DVDs (i.e. without the sound glitch in the first run). It's satisfying to see it on the big screen and hear people laughing and joking in the audience. Naturally we talked all night about what we were planning for this year's event. We're officially excited again. It always takes a long while.

Ursibursi

2005-05-06T15:55:00.000+01:00

One of the true delights of being an organiser of a lindy hop event is getting to know people. Not just people in your own lindy hop scene -- that's a delight in itself, but just about anyone should be able to do that if they are persistent. Getting to know people from all over the world who share the same passion that you do. My next trip to Herrang will by my 5th, which means I have probably been there more times than any other Australian I guess. The main reason I go is definitely because of MLX. It's a way to tell people about our exchange, and it's also a way to speak to those particular people you want to invite. It was at Herrang last year that I finally got to catch up with Lorenz and Ursi, and I think they wouldn't have made it down for SwingCity if I hadn't been able to see them in person that second time.

So now Ursi is back in Melbourne visiting her newfound friends (and one in particular). She's even planning to come back on a semi-permanent basis next year. Lotte and I had lunch with her in Lygon Street today and just talked about swing organising the whole time. Apart from being an amazing dancer Ursi is just one of the nicest (and cutest) people I've ever met. She's teaching workshops on May the 21sts and 22nd, by the way, so if you're a lindy hopper in Melbourne I highly recommend that you get there. She's truly a world class dancer.

Basie Centennial Clips

2005-05-04T13:02:00.000+01:00

Dachelle just pointed me in the direction of a batch of video clips available by FTP from the Basie Centennial event in New York last year. These are fantastic clips and include some terrific footage from the Hellzapoppin' contest there. See for yourself (but make sure you have broadband). ftp://dans.poy.no/events/y6a/

Life is good

2005-05-04T11:27:00.000+01:00

Life is good today. I had been feeling a little sorry for myself this week after having suffered for at least 10 days with the effects of the Hullabaloo 'flu (a cold, really). It's not one of those debilitating colds -- just one that's hard to shake. Anyway yesterday and today I have been feeling decidedly more upbeat, and I put it down to the receding effects of the virus. Last night we invited Ursi from Switzerland to join our troupe training. It was an excellent decision as she inspired us all. Watching a professional dancer of her calibre is intimidating to be sure, but it challenges us, and we are often struggling to find new ways to bring our dancing to a new level. She showed us a very short routine to a slow jazz track from a Starbucks compilation CD. I'm having trouble tracking down the track name, unfortunately. Anyway the routine focussed strong, slow movements combined with fast ones, and it was incredibly difficult to infuse with quite the same feeling as Ursi.

I think I was able to do it all the way through on the correct time, but I was struggling with pretty much all the nuances of movement. For one thing, body rolls are something I just don't seem to be able to do with my computer-stiff back and neck. I fantasise sometimes about the idea of dancing all day every day, and wonder how my body would be transformed. It would be really interesting to find out just how much flexibility and strength someone like me could get with the kind of daily regimen that someone like Ursi uses. She told us on the way home that she has trained 2 hours a day while she's been here, and she has felt like she has been slacking off dramatically. I'm sure that if I trained for an hour a day for one week I would imagine that I was an elite athlete. It's all relative I suppose.

Updates

2005-04-29T13:24:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I took delivery of my new iMac G5 (20 inch). It's a heck of an improvement on my 17 inch iMac G4, with a 1.8GHz G5 processor and 1Gb of RAM. Now I don't want to sound like I was disappointed, but I was alarmed to read this article from ThinkSecret while I was browsing the day before I took delivery. It predicted that Apple would be revising the 20-inch iMacG5 up to 2GHz and a dual-layer Superdrive. The extra few GHz isn't such a big deal but I would have loved to get a dual layer DVD burner. Well, the news now is that the predicted hardware announcements didn't include any iMac updates anyway, so I can rest easy in the knowledge that my shiny new machine will not be outdated in its first week of ownership. It may last two.

The two big Apple update stories in Australia this week aren't hardware related, though, they have to do with OSX Tiger being released, and the expansion of the iTunes music store to Australia. Regular readers may know that I have been keenly awaiting both. Apparently there are Australians who are already successfully registering and downloading from iTMS today. However I suspect there will be a release of iTunes 4.8 to coincide with Tiger's release in a few hours when we will be able to see an Australian storefront for the first time. I plan to join, even though songs are likely to be about $US0.45 more expensive in the Australian store. I don't know how the cost difference is justified. There really is no choice if you want to be legal and buy from the store. Why be fair when you can screw people for a few extra million bucks I guess? Multinational companies win again.

It has begun

2005-04-27T14:25:00.000+01:00

Well, planning for MLX 2005 has officially begun. I started work on the website for this year by doing a fresh installation of Drupal. I had been putting off doing much on it until the video was out of the way. Today the test DVD arrived from Dream Engine. I've given them the go ahead to duplicate after a small correction to the menu, so I hope we'll have the finished DVDs in our hot little hands by Friday.

Hullabaloo

2005-04-26T13:03:00.000+01:00

Hullabaloo was excellent. I returned late last night with Lotte, with very sore muscles and a dose of the traditional exchange virus. We skipped the morning workshops on both days but still had plenty to challenge us. 3 hrs of classes per day really is enough when you're social dancing as well, but that might just be us. We are probably beyond the phase in our learning where we are excited enough to get up in time for an 11am class after having danced til 4am. For me the physical challenge was clearly enough as well.

The workshops were overall extremely valuable, which is something I found last year as well. There were some things that were are a disappointment of course. I was a bit frustrated by being invited to DJ and then being given a 30 minute spot in a non-preferred time. On top of that, invited DJs were expected to pay full price and were not paid. I thought that was pretty poor. Also the only live band I got to see was the Fremantle Jazz Orchestra at the Ball, and it was a really good line up with a fairly poorly chosen set list for the occasion. They played what I would expect to hear at any big band gig at a local fete -- not what I would expect for a bunch of hardcore swingers wishing to relive the swing era. They played what you would call "progressive jazz music" rather than big band swing. All young faces (which is fantastic) using new arrangements, sometimes of tunes that would best be classified as bop or trad jazz rather than swing. They performed a couple of Basie numbers, but only the one they did as an encore had any real Kansas feel about it. The other was a showtune done with a distinctly Sinatra-Basie style (I can't quite remember the number right now).

These things are certainly a matter of taste, and taste is personal. However I noticed that a lot of people were sitting down for a lot of the night, so I started to feel that I wasn't Robinson Crusoe. The rhythm just didn't have that swingin' drive, and there were no themes you could play with. It makes it tough on dancers.

Enough of my minor nitpicks, though. On the positive side of the ledger the Perthies have got to be just about the most welcoming and generous group of swing dancers in the country. Their passion is unsurpassed. This always gives me a great feeling, and it comes through in their events. The weekend opened for me with a riverboat cruise down the Swan. That was really a lot of fun. The boat itself was larger than I had imagined and had two floors where you could dance. There wasn't a lot of room to swing out because everyone tended to congregate on the upper deck floor, but that gave it a really terrific atmosphere. Lotte and I concluded that "enough space" was not an important factor for good atmosphere, and in fact can often detract. The riverboat cruise was probably my favourite event actually, even though it wasn't a full on dance night.

The Saturday night dance was also really good. CRR member Brian Renehan ended up winning the Jack & Jill with Sarah Farrelley, which was a buzz for all the CRR crew because we had been working on competition stuff the previous week. They danced really well and deserved it. I don't think I've ever seen Brian look as relaxed while competing.

CRR performed the Big Apple that night too. That was also a huge buzz because it seemed to go over very well. I personally felt good about my performance, although I was struggling a bit at the beginning with a sore hamstring/groin from the classes. It was funny because I just decided to dance all out anyway and started yelling "RAAAAAAAAHH!" at the top of my voice at various stages to get myself hyped past the pain barrier. It worked. Got to remember that.

Another highlight was our host Wes, who did nothing but wait on us hand and foot all weekend. The best part was when Lotte complained that the only thing they could do to improve the service at "this hotel" was to make up the beds every day. For a nanosecond Wes looked troubled. It was very funny. We thanked him buy making him a breakfast of Dutch pancakes and hid a gift for him in his room.

One more night

2005-04-21T16:24:00.000+01:00

Well, I only need to wait one more night before I head over to Hullabaloo for the weekend. There's only one more thing left to do: find someone to feed my cat. That shouldn't be too hard.

It's boring waiting to go. Today was a very busy day though, with 4 project meetings and a couple of other casual intra-office meetings in between. Everyone is trying to get things sorted out before the long weekend. It's strange how the effect of just one day off compresses time. The smart thing to do is leave earlier. Wish I'd thought of it.

Tomorrow I'll work on my research project and then head to the airport. I get into Perth just in time to make it to the jetty where a riverboat will take us on a cruise down Swan river. I'm worried that something will go wrong and I'll miss the boat. That would really suck, because the cruise goes for 4 and a half hours and sounds like fun.

15,000 and counting

2005-04-20T22:26:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago I backed up my blog just for the hell of it. I was amazed to find that I'd written more than 15,000 words in a little over a month here. That sort of workrate would mean I could write a PhD thesis in under 9 months. If only it was as easy as writing in a blog.

I do believe, however, that having a blog builds the habit of writing. My other blog -- the one I use to compile my MA thesis -- has been proof of that. While it's been quiet there lately I found that while I was writing stuff leading up to my progress report, the blog was a huge help.

Today was a really good day for a whole bunch of reasons, particularly after having such a crap day yesterday. The main thing about yesterday was a silly work related issue, and today that issue became resolved in many ways for me. That was a very positive start. Then, when I was having coffee with my boss he brought up the new iMac G5 that I'd put in for. He's approved the purchase, so hopefully I will be getting that some time soon. I also got some other really good news that I will have to report on in a later blog entry. All in all, a brilliant day.

The only downside was that Lotte left tonight for Hullabaloo and I won't be leaving until Friday night. It's going to be pretty boring at work for the next couple of days waiting to get over to Perth myself. But it will be a great weekend.