I am fine (13 October 2015)

Medium Tedium, etc

UPDATE: We instinctually shun the technologies of our descendants

We instinctually shun the technologies of our ancestry

The previous technology is referenced. The ad-hoc nature of the printed label (self adhesive if memory serves) suggests that the lack of use may be temporary however this is certainly not the case. if there was any doubt, observe the caps. For the moment, the new technology nestles with the old.

  

Out of the city, the format changes. The font and caps remain. However, the old technology is no longer referenced and the label is adhered through wide-format sticky tape even though the label is itself adhesive.

Just in case you missed it: redundancy begets redundancy. The shamelessness of the brown packing tape reinforcing this point.

The display reads 'Closed'. Though in its very nature absence suggests a presence, in this case the technology lacks the format for suggesting it's finality. There will be no 'Open'. The display used to show the time and ticket-related data.

Paper is highly susceptible to relic-dom and pre-ephemera.

 

As previously discussed, here is the current state of the Tower of Metcards, finalised. It stands at approximately 23 centimetres.

 

[Bonus]

 

[Double-Bonus]

Vale, Metcard.

Commercial work

The client called me, asking for an illustration. I agreed and he gave me the following brief: "I want an image of a stylised new moon - an illustrated perfect circle - black, with a black drop-shadow with a blending mode of 'Multiply' on a black background. I obliged, and sent him an image of what appeared to be a consistently black square. "Nope" he said, "I can still make out the outline of the new moon and a touch of the drop shadow". "Aha!" I cried triumphantly. "I never made the moon or drop-shadow. What I am giving you is in fact, a consistently black square without a pixel of detail or variation". "Sure" he replied, unfazed by my jubilation and edge of superiority. "But I can still imagine it there, which is altering my ability to see a consistently black square which is ultimately what I'm after". "So essentially you want me to create an image of a stylised new moon - an illustrated perfect circle - black, with a black drop-shadow with a blending mode of 'Multiply' on a black background that also stops you from thinking of or seeing in your mind an an image of a stylised new moon - an illustrated perfect circle - black, with a black drop-shadow with a blending mode of 'Multiply' on a black background that is essentially a consistently black square".


"Exactly. And I want it to be 800 pixels square".

Media Watch for the LOLs

Perhaps it's a sad state of affairs, but I don't LOL in the purest sense of a L.O.L. as much at the TV I used to. This could be attributed to a number of factors - getting older, the slow-creep of cynicism, the fact that my sense of humour is getting more oblique. Perhaps. In regards to the last point, one thing that I find hilarious (and makes me LOL) is errors in broadcast media. I wait for these zen-like moments like an astronomer watching the sky for shooting stars. I've even caught and documented some in the past.

Recently broadcast media had to scramble for the latest significant event (The Ridding of The Rudd) and mistakes were made. Fortunately, ABCs Media Watch collated these and the result was (for me at least) hilarity as well as an interesting peek behind the curtain of current media. You can stream/watch the episode here (serious LOLs start around 07:47).

My favourites:

And now, the news... In Kyrgyzstan (better in context)

Laurie Oakes caught off guard (as a looping animated gif):

David Stratton gets glitched

David Stratton gets glitched (detail). Reminds me of something ...

A still image, which lasted for one and a half minutes.

Take note: this isn't so much taking pleasure in the mistakes of others - I work with screen-based media and am very familiar with its peccadilloes and there is an element of schadenfreude - rather these moments offer a moment of unexpected beauty honesty and hilarity which seems in stark contrast to the highly polished smug un-funniness of most contemporary TV.

As technology gets more baroque, more room for errors occurs. However, the errors spotted by Media Watch even persisted in Radio, which would be a more straight-forward medium than digital TV. While producers of said media would prefer that these mistakes get swept under the carpet or are eventually banished altogether I believe they are important part of where we are technologically and conceptually. In a way, the upheaval of getting a PM ousted was reflected in the media itself - the state of the country reflected in the state of the broadcast.

Update x ∞ (+ 1)

Now go forth and liveth thine lives.

celebrity got hit by a vehicle (v0.3)

this iphone app review reinstated my faith in the human race. at first i was all like we are fucked until i was looking for apps and I found this review. this is an excellent review and I think we're all going to be OK. this review helped me and is the reason im blogging today. when i was looking for  app im glad i found this review beacuse i usually don't look at reviews because they maybe not clear to help me know if i should download, . i was looking at my screen and stuff was there but it never seemd as relevant to my life as this review when i found it i said to myself OMG relevant. i never even read this review this review made me think about things and my place in the universe and nature... maybe, i don't understand. this review isnt so great and didnt really make sense for me and made me write things that were maybe redundant and irrelevant and basically were staring into the howling chasm of meaninglessness and nature is laughing at our human eattempts at dominance LOL at us. holy crap were all doomed :/

Spam of the minute, 15th January 2010

Image:

Text:
"and i think i'm dreaming of living on a sheep farm and knitting all day because i've recently become obsessed with this blog about a woman who does just that. and cate and i have watched this video she posted of a sheep giving birth alot. it's just the sweetest thing. i want them really bad."

[S.I.C.]

Getting $1 off nothing

I recently made a purchase on Amazon.com and was relatively chuffed to see they followed up my purchase with a promotional offer for $1 off any Amazon mp3 song or album.

HOWEVER:

For a moment there I was thinking about what I should get while fumbling for my credit card to make an additional purchase. That is, until I realised that being in Australia negates their offer. So why torment me so, Amazon? You have my billing address, don't you get that it isn't in the 50 United States or District of Columbia? Why can I buy actual physical CDs, but not download digital files of the same content? I've bought digital downloads without issues from the US before, and even previewed albums in the mp3 format - but any mp3 content (even of the material that I have already downloaded previews of) is unavailable to me via Amazon:

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable reason for Amazon not selling mp3s outside of the US (actually, that's a lie), but the site has my billing address, so why are these options even available for me? To make me feel like maybe, just maybe it will work? I've even downloaded the 'Amazon MP3 Downloader' application, which turned out to be useless. I keep trying, hoping that one day Amazon (and other music sites offering digital downloads to the US only) will change their approach and actually allow me to legitimately pay for something that I want.

Another case in point: Here's a compilation album I'm interested in by Talking Heads - 'Bonus Rarities & Outtakes' but it's ONLY available as an mp3 purchase. I read about this album online, got excited about it (and my band is working on a cover of 'Drugs' so I wanted to hear the alternate version) but there is no way I can buy it. In fact, I wish I never knew about it. There's not even an option for me to get an email alert if it ever is available in the Antipodes.

We feel backward enough here as it is. We get movies and TV shows significantly later than the US and our video games get censored and/or altered. Amazon was a leader in removing DRM from it's mp3s, why can't it be a leader in international mp3 distribution? At least we have a (limited) iTunes store:

I HAVE MONEY TO PAY FOR MUSIC, PLEASE HELP ME SPEND IT.
(Or at least give me a promotional offer I can actually use).

29 minutes for 47 minutes

Recent work:

Actually that's not entirely true. It's a screngrab of the outlines of some work I've been doing for a local comics anthology. The final work does not look like this.

Anyway, there have been many progress bars in my life of late. I'm thinking that whoever coined the term 'progress bar' was being ironic. My laptop has been in the repair shop twice. Almost three times actually. Seems I was a victim of the infamous 2007 NVIDIA fiasco.

Know what I mean?

I'm getting a real sense of the organic and tricky nature of electronic technology. For example: I'm reinstalling some software and the estimated time has been fluctuating wildly. This suggests that the computer is actually uncertain of the time remaining, but it's guessing anyway. What's better, an honest assessment of uncertainty or an educated yet inaccurate stab-in-the-dark?

Computer, ANSWER ME.

THEY'RE BACK

The $1 donuts [sic] have slunk back into The World. Be mindful and alert, as they may mean to do you harm. They have changed the colour of the speech balloon, but the shape remains as does the typeface - Helvetica Rounded. They've streamlined the aesthetic a bit, but probably used the same working files.


The image above reminds me of something that happened to me in the recent past. I was heading to a friends house and thought to buy some chips. The convenience store had a deal where you could buy two packets for $3.60, one pack cost $2. I picked up a pack and took it to the counter to pay. The clerk said to me: "You don't want to get another packet? Two packets are only $3.60." I said no thanks, and he asked me again, his tone escalating slightly, "Are you sure? It's a saving of 40¢." "Thanks, but I'll be fine with the one" I said politely. At that point, the point where he realised that I wasn't prepared to spend an extra $1.60 in order to save 40¢ and that I had sufficient chips, he gave me a funny look like I was some kind of lost cause. He may be right.

The word 'reminds' is not in my spell-checker.

Between browsing, a little piece of death

An obvious sign we are doomed as a species

An entire 'Special Interest' rack devoted solely to the works of André Rieu (and one copy of 'Never Been Kissed' on DVD).

ENOUGH. SAID.

Crash, Bandicoot!

My desktop computer keeps crashing and I'm trying to get some work done.

Ol' red-eyes is back

'Tis a perfect day for sinus-based maladies here in Melbourne towne.

Moment... Um

So here we are - six days into twenty-oh-nine. The hitherto (well... there was that one time) ceaseless procession of time has led us to this moment. I have been relatively idle and am slowly resuming the busy.

Some consideration for the year 2009:
It's the International Year of Reconciliation, Astronomy and Natural Fibres.
Some countries will cease broadcasting analogue TV signals.
Numerically it looks a little bit like the word "zoog" (as long as the font has a single story lower-case 'g').
The longest lasting total solar eclipse of the 21st century will occur.
It seems, and potentially will be, more futuristic than 2008.

Happy zoog!

Google doesn't understand me

I recently installed the Google app for my iPhone after reading that it has voice-recognition search functionality. I'm not sure if it's my thick Australian accent, or the fact that I was perhaps slurring my words, but Google and I had a degree of trouble communicating.

I tried to search for this blog, so my spoken search term was "Medium Tedium".

My first attempt, the app interpreted my command as 'nadien kdm'


Then 'medium tv m' - perhaps the closest out of all the tries.


My personal favourite: 'canadian kadian'


'michigan stadium' if-you-will. This attempt was with an American accent, remembering that the Speakable Items on my old Quadra responded better to this type of accent.


Failing that I tried an English accent, resulting in 'la ti do'


'canadian staduim'. At this moment, I'm considering speech therapy to assist with my pronunciation of the letter 'm'


'vb net com'


And again, I get a medium in there. 'medium tv mo'. Another close one.


At this point I gave up. However, it's a decent little app. All the searches open up in Safari, and I've yet to try it's integration with other Google tools. The thing I liked most about it was that after you've spoken, the app shows an accurate waveform of your voice recording. I think this has some nice potential for future apps with visual data being manipulated by real-world sounds.

1 year later...

Whoo! This blog has been going for a year! To new visitors, thanks. To returning visitors, thanks and ... thanks!

Here's some stats:
This is the most popular page on the blog.
Most of my visitors come from America, followed by Australia.
May this year was the most lacklustre posting month for me with a measly 5 posts
I've made a total of 148 posts, which averages to a post roughly every 2.4 days
The top keywords bringing people to the site are "that gum you like is coming back in style" and these are responsible for 1.87% of visitors
Most visitors find the site via Google Images
Only 27% of visitors come directly to the site
69.40% of visitors are using Firefox. Nice!
The most prevalent editorial error is the possessive apostrophe (eg: it's vs its)

So thanks for bearing with me over the last year and I hope to continue supplying content in a semi-regular fashion.

Your host.

The 'one dollar donut' [sic] lied to you

So I was walking past a Seven Eleven and I noticed that the doughnuts starring in the (this is the doughnut talking) "I'm just $1" and "1$ doughnut" campaign were, in fact, THE SAME doughnut. To wit, between the chocolate and strawberry doughnut, one of them is an impostor. My money's on the chocolate being the grandaddy-of-all-liars as it'd be easier to darken the strawberry's lighter hue.

Evidence:


Why not photograph two doughnuts for variety? Are they trying to suggest that all Seven Eleven doughnuts have the same uniformly drippy icing?

I meant to blog about this a while ago, which kinda loses the freshness of this post as you won't be able to track down the doughnuts yourself and demand answers (the promotion finished in July). I found these images while cleaning up my computer and thought people needed to know about this insidious example of a BLATANT VISUAL FABRICATION.

Stay alert. The doughnut is a lie.