BSG to the extreme

In the week since I first posted about my newfound love for Battlestar Galactica, I have almost completed a bittorrent assisted, time-shifted catch up on the series so far. It was not until after I had watched the free RealPlayer stream of Episode 1 that I actually realised there was a mini-series before the current Series 1 episodes. So I had quite a lot of catching up to do.

The mini series was extremely good. It kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time, and ended beautifully. I'm struggling to think of a sci-fi TV experience that comes close to the drama and believability of this series. I particularly like the combination of old and new technologies, side by side with the duality of humans and machines (the cylons). There are moments that stick with me, like when a human-shaped cylon woman sees a baby for the first time and asks "Are you alive?" before killing it -- apparently out of curiosity over its fragility, or just perhaps out of mercy because she knows that the world is about to be invaded and destroyed. Then in episode 5, the human character Starbuck asks a cylon being "Are you alive?" when she happens upon its crashed ship. She also ends its "life" -- but can it be alive it it's a machine? So there is this underlying battle between humans and the machines about which one is truly "alive".

I really like the fact that the machines are given more and more interesting and human characteristics: questioning themselves and their motives, not knowing the full story themselves, and being vulnerable in some ways, just as humans are. A lot of time in the subplots is devoted to depicting human foibles. Mistakes, character flaws, addictions and indulgences are a very prominent feature. I feel all of this is asking us to consider whether humans really deserve to be a sort of "master race" of beings after all -- but at the same time these are the characteristics that we associate with being "human". All of these themes are very often dealt with in sci fi (how many times did we have to endure them in Star Trek?) but I've never seen them done in such a compelling way. They tackle the big issues, from the President who chides herself for having selfish thoughts when she finds out she has cancer to the brilliant scientist who is shamelessly susceptible to the sexual advances of what turns out to be a human-like cylon. It's completely enthralling.

Half-day Getaway

Our plans for a getaway for a few days dissolved as we realised it takes more planning and willpower than we possessed halfway into Easter. We compromised on a half-day trip up to Mt Dandenong. It would give us a chance to give the new car a good run and a sense of being away from the city for a few hours. After a small discussion over which particular lookout was the best to aim for, we put our $4 into the hand of a friendly parking attendant at Sky High. Everyone else had decided Easter Sunday was a good time to go up to this famous lookout, of course, so we were not alone. However when it came time to go for a short forest walk we found that it was really quite peaceful out there after all.

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On the way home we decided it would be fun after all to drop in at Mayfields and check out the Cairo Club Orchestra (an authentic 1920s dance band). As we pulled in we found Doz, Crinster and Linnea on the footpath waiting for us! The Swedes were actually about to welcome another couple of Swedes into the country so I went to help pick them (and their 7 months worth of luggage) from Spencer Street. We all went to eat at Umago in Brunswick Street before kicking it to the Cairo Club -- and a fantastic night was had by all.

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Dutch brunches rule

Regular readers might recall that we were hosting a special Dutch Easter brunch on Friday morning with 10 of our friends squeezed into our living room. Lotte went to the Dutch shop in Blackburn especially to get supplies. These are all things you'd find in the pantry in most houses in Holland. It was funny to see the reactions as people tried out various things. I think the weirdest reaction was to Lotte's favourite -- vlokken (echte chocolade!). The closest equivalent to these chocolate shavings in Australian culture is hundreds & thousands or chocolate sprinkles. However unlike the Australian version, even grown ups sprinkle these real chocolate pieces on their bread for breakfast. Remarkably civilised, you'd think, but everyone just stared at Lotte when she suggested it.

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We also spent quite a while boiling and colouring eggs with food dye. The tradition is that there are at least 3 eggs per person. When you get your egg you're supposed to challenge someone to an egg-breaking dual. The winner gets to fight another battle while the loser gets to eat their battered goog. My super egg was the outstanding performer, winning 10 battles (5 eggs, both ends) before finally cracking. I was pretty hungry by that stage.

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Doz brought her honeymooning friends from Malaysia & Singapore to the brunch. You can see them in the background in the photo above. They were really nice. We all went down to Fairfield Park Boathouse afterwards and mucked around at the concrete pagoda overlooking the river there. It has a decent floor for dancing and we put on a mix of swing, soul and hip hop stuff on our trusty portable CD player. The Swedes decided that dancing wasn't good enough and started wrestling instead. I think Pelle was doing the splits while Linnea helped.

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Well, it all helped work up enough of an appetite so that we could go to Doz's place for a Mexican feast afterwards. Then everyone else played board games while I slept on the couch. It was an excellent finish to an awesome day.

Easter Hop wrap

Thursday night was the 6th annual Easter Hop, and it was easy to organise and a big success. Around 100 people attended, all the raffle tickets sold out, and we raised $576.10 for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Along with everything else, it was a really fun dance night and a great atmosphere. Easter Hop never seems to miss on that front. The Pearly Shells Swing Orchestra played up a storm as usual and there was a friendly mix of dancers and non-dancers in attendance, which always improves the atmosphere I think.

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Battlestar Galactica

Last night I watched Battlestar Galactica for the first time. It was the first Battlestar Galactica experience for me. I haven't even seen the original movie, although I did know of its existence. Odd, since I'm a sci fi fan from way back.

I really enjoyed most of the episode (105: You can't go home again). I was put off a little by some of the camerawork, which reminded me of some of the worst of NYPD Blue's indulgence in deliberate camera wiggling for no reason. Being a huge fan of Blade Runner I was fascinated seeing Edward James Omos in a sci fi role again. His performance was good. I liked Starbuck a lot. Celebrity crush ahoy. Apollo seemed a little nancy-boyish for my liking (sorry if that offends anyone, it's just a feeling I had).

I think I'm going to be watching more often from now on -- I might even try to track down the series on DVD because I think it's moving to a 10.30pm timeslot which could get a little late.

One 'flu over the Easter eggs

It seems that there is some kind of 'flu going around Melbourne, and today is Lotte's third day in a row of suffering. I seem to have been lucky to escape with a day of headaches, whle she has the full-blown symptons. So she's back at the doctor today for an assessment. Being an asthma sufferer, she has to be careful. Unfortunately this has put a bit of a dampener on the last day of work before Easter. The Easter Hop is tonight, but Lotte will probably miss it, and then we are having a Dutch Easter brunch at our place tomorrow. She's concerned that she might not have enough energy to do everything she wanted to do before the brunch. Our plans for a getaway over part of Easter could also be in jeopardy.

Anyway the plan for tonight is that I'll get there around 6.15pm, set up the Easter Hop decorations and organise the raffle. I have tickets and various prizes. Just need to get an Easter hamper of some sort today (mental note). Tomorrow we'll be boiling lots of eggs (we seem to have about 4 dozen in the fridge at home) and painting them, Dutchie style. Lotte's also planning to make a few other Dutch treats like paasbrood (Easter bread filled with almond paste). Lekker. There should be about 12 of us at the brunch all up -- quite a test for our humble abode. I'll post pictures.

Easter Hop 2005

The 6th Annunal Easter Hop is this week on Thursday 24th
March!! As with last year, we will be raising money for the
Peter MacCullum Cancer Centre. The Pearly Shells Swing
Orchestra will play for your dancing enjoyment.

We'll have charity taxi dances, Easter eggs and all the
usual Easter hop fun. Matt Riddle will DJ during the
breaks.

Counter meals are available from 7pm, with the band starting
at around 8.30pm. Don't miss this chance to be a part of one
of Melbourne's oldest swing traditions. There is limited
dance space available, at the venue, however the floor will
be cleared of chairs and tables to maximise dance space!

Venue: The Bendigo Hotel, 125 Johnston St Collingwood.

Date: Thursday, 24 March starting at 8.30pm (dinner from 7.00pm).

Dinner bookings: 9417-3415

Entry: $12

This is a non-profit event. Part of every entry fee goes
to charity.

Maintaining My Mac

Yesterday was maintenance day at Chez Zot. With less than 1.5% of my disk space available, my Powerbook's hard drive was running on borrowed time. I have been strict about what gets onto it for a long time -- there are no games except BF 1942, which I play almost daily, a very limited selection of Lindy Hop clips for teaching, and no pr0n! But with disk space at a critical low I needed to do something drastic. I can't move my music (which takes >50% of the space) off the laptop because it's my primary machine and I need it for DJing. So I needed to archive something else. I decided it had to be my iPhoto library -- now including something like 3-4 years of snapshots from various trips. It's grown to over 3.6 Gb in size in that time.

At the same time I needed to do a full backup. So to achieve this goal I decided to use the highly recommended and simple shareware tool, Carbon Copy Cloner. Good choice. After an hour or so I had backed up all user files onto an external drive painlessly. I also decided it would be a good idea to perform some routine maintenance and downloaded MacJanitor. This Freeware app runs a range of unix maintenance scripts that usually only get executed automatically late at night. Laptops like my Powerbook don't usually run these scripts because they're off at night, so every now and again it's a good idea to run something like this.

As a result of these two things, I now have an extra 8% of hard disk space so that I can at least keep going for a while. In the long term I need an upgrade, but for now I'm happy.

Got iPod? Get Mac!

AppleInsider:

Morgan Stanley today upgrade Apple Computer to "overweight," saying it believes the Mac conversion rate within Appleís iPod customer base is roughly double what the market currently expects. ...

The survey, which polled 400 consumers, found that 19% of PC iPod owners have purchased a Mac in the past year, compared to Wall Street's expectations of 10%. These results would imply two full points of global PC market share gain for Apple in 2005, from 3% to 5%, the firm said. Going forward, the firm believes the conversion rate of the iPod customer base from PC to Mac could track closer to 25%.

Sleepy Sunday

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Yaawwwwn! Sunday morning was a sleepy one. With both of us feeling somewhat the worse for wear, we headed around the corner to our favourite cafe and ordered the French toast with maple syrup, stewed rubarb and pistachio ricotta. Hit the spot.

Later we went down to the Fairfield boathouse and saw lots of African and Aboriginal music. We also did a bit of dance training on our own stuff, which we like to do as often as we can. Hopefully we'll get more time to do it in the future. It always takes a while to work things out and at the moment we're just exploring new options for performance stuff.

Party time

The other thing we did yesterday was attend parties. First there was Olivia's 30th at La Camera at Southgate. An excellent lunch with good company, including our new friends Sherry and Jason. For some reason we've met them several times over the past few weeks at dinner and jazz related activities organised by Ben & Olivia. We just seemed to hit it off. Jason is from Atlanta, Georgia, and has the kind of unshakable accent you can only find in the south of the US. The trick is that the Georgian drawl shares some vowels with a broad Australian accent, and having been here for a couple of years Jason tends to say names and proper nouns in the native lingo, so you're left staring at his mouth wondering exactly where to place him. Anyway it turns out that Jason is a jazz and MST3K fan and Xbox enthusiast, so we have a lot to talk about. We've decided we're getting together soon for an MST3K night.

Yesterday night after Dance Card we headed to The Swedes' abode for their official housewarming. I can't quite figure out why the house needed to be warmed, because they moved in a fair while ago and one of their housemates is moving out as well, but we had fun nonetheless. Here's a pic, courtesy of Doz.

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More good performances

Yesterday was a busy day. We actually went to two dance performances in between everything else. In the morning we went to the National Theatre in St Kilda to see this year's VCE TOP Class Dance -- basically the cream of the crop from this year's secondary school dance students from the VET and TOP programs. They had three divisions: TOP Technique, TOP Composition, and VET. We were both blown away by the quality of the perfomances. These kids are amazing.

Then at night we went along to Dance Card, a program of improvised dance solos by 5 very different dancers to 'live' sound and audio. In fact the music was produced mostly electronically with occasional instrumental interludes (banjos and cowbells and things) by a guy called Mark Lang. The main reason we went was to see Lotte's teacher Helena, a Korean born dance master whose performance eclipsed the others for me. I highly recommend checking it out, but I think the last performance of the season is this afternoon at 5pm, so you'd better be quick.

Aether

One of the nicest things about having a partner who is just as into dancing as me is that we get to go to dance performances together. On Wednesday night we went to see a show by local choreographer Lucy Guerin called Aether. The promo material says this about the show:

Aether is inspired by the increasingly invasive onslaught of communications we receive through email, phone, newspaper, television, billboards, radio, mail, fax, internet, text messages and myriad other forms for disseminating information. From devastating world events to advertisements for increased libido, we inhabit a world where information reaches us in many forms and often overwhelms us with its intensity and quantity.

What it doesn't say is that it's actually also pretty funny. The aim was no doubt to show something about how ludicrous it is to live in a mediated world, but they managed to achieve such a level of satirical comment that it was obvious that they were not taking themselves too seriously. I really enjoyed the performance also for the movement and technique -- a sort of mixture between Cunningham and contact improvisation partner work as far as I could tell. The first half concentrates mainly on depicting electronic communication using stoccato, sometimes robotic, movements, while the second turns its attention to the interlocutors themselves in their frustrated mediated interactions. The dancers go to address each other, but instead of speaking or gesturing they emit strange (and usually silly) noises while using whole body movements to show what they mean. I belly laughed most of my way through the second half and so did Lotte.

Aether is playing at the North Melbourne Town Hall until March the 27th. There seem to be double passes being given away over at The Program, but I can't tell if they are all gone yet. Check it out.

Billy Joel in Rehab again

I was browsing the BBC news headlines today when I found this article on Billy Joel going into rehab again. Now that in itself wasn't much of a shock, but the photo of him was. Is it just me, or does Joel bear a strange resemblance to Tatu from Fantasy Island? Put that guy in a white tux and...

Improv & Choreography redux

The Improv & Choreography workshop went well. There were 6 of us in total, with thepaulguy stepping in to help with numbers at the last minute. I have to say it was a lot of fun. There is something particularly interesting about introducing challenges to spice things up, improv-wise. I guess that is no secret to anyone who has tried other forms of improv before, like Theatresports. There's almost always a game or a rule to get your creative juices flowing, isn't there?

The only alteration I made to the plan posted yesterday was to have a little more time at the end of each challenge to let everyone show the stuff they came up with to everyone else. This was a popular part because it allowed everyone to see, for example, a move they had made up on the spur of the moment being interpreted by someone else. Sort of like Chinese whispers. It was really funny and we came up with some stuff that was truly different from the usual. The process could definitely be used with a particular song or part of a song that you really want new ideas for. Cool.

Improvisation and Choreography

Today I finally wrote down in words an idea on Improvisation and Choreography that I have had in mind for a workshop plan. The act of writing it down made me revise my ideas, which is always good, and I looked around a bit (i.e. Googled) for some resources that have to do with learning objectives in the area. I found a few things that were useful and seemed to validate the idea I had in mind. The plan I came up with is below.

Improvisation and Choreography

Learning Objectives:

1. Increase understanding of choreographic principles, processes, and structures.

2. Improve improvisation skills in partnered dancing.

3. Develop cooperative skills in improvisation and choreography.

Activities

Impro Challenge # 1: Use three basic movements -- twisting, stretching, and bending Dancers improvise movements with these ideas on their own (to music). (3 mins)

Partner work. Partners stay in couples for this activitiy without rotating. Dancers take it in turns to incorporate twisting, stretching and bending movements into their dancing. Follows improvise for about 1 minute while leaders dance basics and observe. Leaders improvise while followers observe for about 1 minute. Then try to incorporate these movements (together) into regular social dancing for 2 minutes. Try to remember 3 of the movements your partner did during the improv. (5 mins)

Revision. Partners change. Each person should demonstrate their 3 favourite movements that your previous partner did during the improv (they don't have to be 1 twist, 1 stretch and 1 bend). (5 mins)

For the next song, the new partners should incorporate the learnt movements into their dancing. (3 mins)

Impro Challenge # 2: use 3 dynamics -- high vs low, use space vs be stingy with space, move with vs against music.

Using these ideas, and working in partners, take 5 mins to improvise. Start with trying out all 3 ideas. Choose your favourite and select any 3 movements you like that come out of the improv. (5 mins)

Choreography: Spend the next song coming up with a sequence of 3 or 4 steps that you will teach the rest of the group. (3 mins)

Review: Each couple spends 3 mins teaching the group their sequence of 3 or 4 steps (12 mins)

Incorporate: Partners change and incorporate their favourite sequences into their dancing (3 mins)

Crazy Busy weekend

The weekend was all about hanging out with friends. It might have been a long weekend for most, but Lotte was working for much of the time and the University doesn't believe in Labour Day so we had to make the most out of our time. So we organised a packed schedule.

Friday night was busy, with a 2 hour meeting with Ryan about the MLX video production followed by Diga Diga Doo (see previous post) while Lotte was working. I went to bed fairly late as a result, and Lotte came home with the new car around 10.30am. We went for breakfast at A Minor Place (pictured below) which is one of our favouite weekend indulgences.

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We decided we wanted to test out the new car and called the Swedes and the Crinster for an impromptu trip in search of a swim. It was a hot day and we felt like having some fun. We ended up at Sandringham beach at around 4.20pm, which meant that Lotte had a quick dip before we needed to get her to her shift. She was late even though we had the new shiny red auto at our disposal. I dropped her and headed back towards St Kilda to meet the others for what turned out to be a delightful meal at Soul Mama in St Kilda. Highly recommended. After wandering down Acland St for dessert at Big Mouth I headed back east to pic Lotte up. Phew -- quite a few clicks on the digital odometer that day! The rest of the night involved some much needed household chores and an early night.

We must have been pretty tired because on Sunday morning we were nowhere near ready for James the Builder's arrival (see previous post). That was pretty funny because we actually had to ask him to wait while we got out changed out of our jim jams. Oops. Well in our defence, he was a quarter of an hour early.

So after that we meet up with Doz at A Minor Place to plan out our trip to Europe. She's going to come and hang with us at Hameau du Lac and then spend some time up in Holland.

After the Dozmeet we went to pick up Thepaulguy from the airport. TPG is here until Wednesday and will be staying at our place on his way out to the States for some film school interviews. Here's a picture of Paul trying to look like Guy Sebastian:

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So after we picked up Paul we went over to a BBQ organised by Ali and Kat at the house they are sitting in Northcote. It's been quite a while since I got to hang out with the swingtwins so it was really fun to see them, and once again I decided that it should happen more often.

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Then we all headed down to Mayfields. It was the first time back to Mayfields for a few of us for a loooooong time. Sam and I think we haven't been there for about 2 years. DJ Doz was in da haus and Crin was there too. It was way too hot and I was wearing jeans but I still had fun.

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Afterwards we went to Trampoline in Brunswick Street and ate ice cream. I had pear-caramel, bloody orange and wild berry. The bloody orange was one of the nicest flavours of gelati I've ever had. Mmmmmmmm.

James the builder

Luckily for you, dear reader, this blog started well after a very long and very expensive court process involving a claim against the builder of our house. The short story is that the court found in our favour and we are now able to get the house fixed up entirely. This is the happy ending we've been waiting for.

James (not the original builder) is in charge of the reparations, and today he came over to discuss the work with us. What we most wanted to know was whether and for how long we would have to vacate the premises, as well as a few other logistics. Would we need to move our stuff out? How long will all of the work take? Are you gonna fix the back door??

The news was all good, it seems. Work will start in about a month. We may not have to move out during that time at all. We will need to move our furniture around a fair bit though, because they're going to bring the floorboards in our bedroom up to do some ventilation work. We've decided it's a good idea to find some storage space for some of our boxes of stuff to provide more shifting room while the work is going on.

The builders will re-hang all of the doors and windows in the whole house that need adjusting after the work too. They'll replace all the broken tiles and fix the paintwork and skirting boards. And all the cracked plaster will come off too, of course. Dusty work, but they also clean up as they go, so it shouldn't be too disruptive. Very good news.

The best thing of all was that James himself was patient and easy to talk to. He gave us a lot of confidence without trying hard at all -- he's got about 22 years experience and for the last 3 or 4 years has been doing only insurance repair jobs like ours. We just can't wait for them to get started.

And here it is

Lotte arrived up this morning after her overnight shift with the new Corolla. And here it is:

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The only sad part of the story is that they apparently didn't fit the driver's side front wheel guard correctly, so that on its maiden journey the wheel guard came loose and started rubbing on the tyre. It snapped off, of course, and wore down immediately. Even though Lotte pulled over straight away, the damage had been done.

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RIP DDD

Tonight was a sad night in Melbourne Lindy Hop history -- the closing of the fortnightly DJ'd event started a year ago called Diga Diga Doo. I happened to be on the DJ roster this time and it was certainly a shame to think that this one was going to be the last. As expected there were quite a few people out for the last one. If only everyone would support these gigs every time -- but I think it's probably expecting too much. My own unsurprising and unscientific take on all this is that we simply don't see enough new hoppers starting social dancing these days. There is always going to be some kind of attrition rate among the experienced group. So it's a revolving door. Only a very small hard core will be around for more than a couple of years at a time.

So, happy birthday DDD, and rest in peace.