An/Aesthetics

2005-05-13T13:03:00.000+10:00

Check this out!ABC NesOpen "ABC Nes" in a new windowAbout Bitty BrowserAbout Turnstyle

2005-03-09T15:20:00.000+11:00

This is just a testTo see if the commenting works

2005-01-10T15:10:00.000+11:00

Change in direction I'm reviving this blog to host reviews and comments on the more marginalised popular cultural artifacts (e.g. video games, comics, and other things that aren't too marginalised on the net now that I think of it) My LiveJournal will contain the weird links that I used to post here.

2004-07-19T09:30:00.000+10:00

In the interests of balance Here's a website for liars who support Howard

2004-07-15T10:23:00.000+10:00

The War on Terror needs You! So it's time to reintroduce the draft!

2004-07-05T08:38:00.000+10:00

John Howard's Lies Finally, all compiled on one site.

2004-07-02T16:04:00.000+10:00

And now for something unbearably cute The infinite cat project

2004-06-29T12:20:00.000+10:00

What's your political orientation? Try the Political Compass For future reference my result was: Economic Left/Right: -7.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.21 which means I'm more anti-authoritarian and left wing than Gandhi. I must start drinking my own urine immediately

2004-06-29T06:44:00.000+10:00

Just in time for Spiderman 2 Here's a series of rejected strips. Reload your browser to see the next one. [from diepunyhumans. Where else?]

2004-06-28T06:37:00.000+10:00

Yet more writing news "Remembrance Day" has just been sent off to "Fables and Reflections", "With This Ring I Thee DEAD!" will be performed on the 12th of September. The details are here. Whinge My CD-Burner appears to be dead. Won't be able to get a new one for a while. I better not lose anything...

2004-06-18T09:48:00.000+10:00

Why we are at war Please note that I disagree with much of this article but I do think the central metaphor is a good one. I do not see why, though, a struggle against the dark age of Islamofascism should lead us straight into a dark age of "radical conservatism". I'm against dark ages in general. And I just can't see Bush as Theseus. Minos, yes.

2004-06-18T08:57:00.000+10:00

Terry Jones puts it in perspective How to raise children the Donald Rumsfeld way.

2004-06-16T08:34:00.000+10:00

Why Mormons are dangerous You know, I'm trying to make stuff like this up. Real life beats you every time.

2004-06-09T10:20:00.000+10:00

Mark Latham = Colonel Kurtz/ Interesting article that collects most of the negative stories about Mark Latham

2004-06-03T06:41:00.000+10:00

Purely for research purposes only Some of Monash University Library's more unusual acquisitions

2004-06-02T10:53:00.000+10:00

The Sex Scandal that wasn't The intern who didn't sleep with John Kerry tells her side of the story - and attempts to find out where the rumour started. Fascinated as I am with the US political scene at the moment, it hasn't produced many admirable characters. Alex Polier is an exception. You go, girl!

2004-06-01T12:43:00.000+10:00

Word for today armigerous: bearing arms

2004-05-28T14:57:00.000+10:00

Amazing Confluence Pekar! Crumb! Bragg! (Billy, not Fort) Together again for the first time!

2004-05-28T09:04:00.000+10:00

New Blog I've found Adam Ford's blog. He seems familiar, but I can't quite place him. Like me, he's interested in NeoPulp

2004-05-28T08:34:00.000+10:00

Something for the Simpsons fans Of which I am, of course, one. Finally someone's done a complete map of Springfield (as of season 15) For that special someone in your life (i.e. me) you might want to consider the poster from Cafepress

2004-05-28T06:21:00.000+10:00

Why I can't vote Labour anymore You see, when our contemptible wanna-be Napoleon announced his government was banning gay marriages, I thought - at least Labour will stop this blatantly wedge-driven and totally discriminatory legislation in the Senate. Nah. They support it! This vile manifestation of religious homophobia has bipartisan support. Now Australia is back to denying basic rights to

2004-05-27T15:36:00.000+10:00

Intellectual Property News The BBC are not only putting their archive online, they're making it available under a Creative Commons licence. Why should you care? Because you (if you're English) will not only be able to download old BBC TV and radio shows and put them on whatever you damn well feel like to view/listen to them, but you'll also be able to use them in any way you see fit as long as

2004-05-26T12:07:00.000+10:00

Looking for weapons of mass destruction? Here they are! [from Boing Boing]

2004-05-24T15:51:00.000+10:00

Query of the Day Is Michael Moore an asshole?

2004-05-24T15:23:00.000+10:00

Andy Kaufman is still dead! But at least he's still updating his blog.

2004-05-24T09:16:00.000+10:00

New Addition Added Kate Orman's Live Journal to links - I really should separate them out. I met Kate (well, formally introduced myself to her) at David and Kyla's Dawn of the Coconut party. I also need to add Andrew's blog, but the link's at home.

2004-05-24T08:49:00.000+10:00

Ideal film location? Photo essay of abandoned town on an uninhabited island in Japan. From Boing Boing.

2004-05-23T10:56:00.000+10:00

Giant Robots and Death Rays I've always wondered where mad scientists get their stuff.

2004-05-21T08:33:00.000+10:00

Useful Tool Tired of having to register (for "free") at news sites? Try this.

2004-05-20T06:36:00.000+10:00

US Censorship in Action I knew I didn't dream this. I didn't hear the exact context, but during a US news programme the camera was moved off Colin Powell while the interview was in progress. It seems that press secretaries hold the real power in Washington. Transcript courtesy of Die Puny Humans

2004-05-19T08:53:00.000+10:00

Word for Today I've been using Google's define function for words I don't know (a habit I'll have to maintain if I'm going to have any success as a writer.) Today's word is: preterition Defined as: suggesting by deliberately concise treatment that much of significance is omitted So, if I say the latest Howard budget treats most young parents as whores, am I using preterition? Answers in the

2004-05-18T12:58:00.000+10:00

Why "His Girl Friday" wouldn't be made today. Why are most recent American films crap? Could it be the script?

2004-05-17T11:06:00.000+10:00

Bag found! Crisis narrowly averted. Everything was in it too. Thank you CityRail! (for once...)

2004-05-17T09:19:00.000+10:00

Internet Justice This is a classic story of the biter bit What's interesting is the virtual flash mob that came into being from the bulletin board which allowed for transnational surveillance of the reverse-scam. Imagine if this was used for political purposes.... More Writing Update Brett and I have changed the title our radio play from Unholy Matrimony to With This Ring I Thee DEAD! which

2004-05-13T06:32:00.000+10:00

Writing Update Yesterday I found out that Brett and I have had our radio play "Unholy Matrimony" accepted by FBi for live broadcast. So my writing tally since last year: I-jacked - fails to place in WA convention competition Porn Again - wins Flash Fiction at Magic Casements 1 and is published in Agog 3 Crossed Lines - a ten minute play written with Brett - gets on short list for "Short and

2004-05-11T13:48:00.000+10:00

Sometimes your questions get answered for you... I was discussing with Grant a few weeks ago what happened to the Daredevil writer Anne Nocenti - now I know

2004-05-06T08:23:00.000+10:00

I Know! I've fallen behind (again) with postings. Will put a lot more in tomorrow (last day of holiday). Just had to link to this - Photos of Japanese vending machines

2004-04-02T09:17:00.000+10:00

Found It! Ahhh, the wonders of the Wayback Machine. Here's Paul Riddell's Bestiary of Fanboys

2004-04-01T09:04:00.000+10:00

Student Protests Admittedly I missed all the excitement of the student protest yesterday as I was in another part of UTS. But I still got to leave early once the students had occupied the Chancellory. Having been a student I am sympathetic to the reasons for the protest. 25% is just too high an increase in HECS and the government has ensured the Higher Education sector is now dependent on

2004-03-29T08:36:00.000+10:00

New additions Just added my wife's blog to the sidebar, as well as my RSS feed for people who know how to use those things, and to encourage me to post more. Also: new car next week, bank willing.

2004-03-16T14:06:00.000+11:00

Quick Poll Which science fiction/fantasy hero/villain is George W Bush? Is he... Captain Kirk? - Going boldly where no man has gone before. Using the Prime Directive as more a guideline than an iron-clad law to bring peace to war-torn worlds on behalf of the Federation. Doctor Who? - Seemingly a bumbling amateur who somehow manages to resolve complex conflicts through a combination of

2004-03-12T08:34:00.000+11:00

Happy Women Swallow Here's why.

2004-03-12T08:28:00.000+11:00

Shakespeare with all the boring text and performance taken out Here's is a page with maps of the social networks for each of Shakespeare's plays. You can watch Antony and Cleopatra in 5 minutes.

2004-03-09T13:10:00.000+11:00

Geeks inheriting the Earth You know, I actually prefer the appellation "nerd" rather than "geek" as I don't (often) bite the heads off chickens to entertain the carny crowds. However, at Magic Casements last weekend I encountered the more solipsistic variety of geek who tending to slow down the panel sessions to a crawl while they aired their unkempt mindsets to the mutual discomfort of all.

2004-02-20T12:25:00.000+11:00

Paranoia Blog And here's a blog from the designers/creators of Paranoia.XP

2004-02-20T11:48:00.000+11:00

Are you cleared to know this? Paranoia is being republished as Paranoia.XP. Waaa Hooo! Remember, the Computer is Your Friend. Happiness is Mandatory. And if your clearance is infra-red, please report to nearest termination booth for recycling. Have a nice day.

2004-02-19T12:02:00.000+11:00

New addition Just found Paul Riddell's LiveJournal so I've added it to the side links. Paul Riddell is one of the funniest men in SF criticism, but I can't find an archive of his writing to prove it to you. Damn.

2004-02-15T08:47:00.000+11:00

Cory Doctorow on E-Books Cory Doctorow is one of the more interesting new SF writers. He not only writes about technological change, he incorporates within the very distribution of his writing. For example, both his novels (and some of his short stories) are available as e-books. For free. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Eastern Standard Tribe. A Place So Foreign. He says it's good marketing

2004-02-15T07:43:00.000+11:00

Added commenting Isn't that exciting?

2004-02-12T11:52:00.000+11:00

More stuff on 9/11 How much more could there be? How about the point of view of one of the flight attendents. One we didn't hear about.

2004-02-12T10:52:00.000+11:00

Writer's Resource Not just for comic book writers' either

2004-02-12T10:51:00.000+11:00

Anti Valentine's Day cards I could have done with these several years ago...

2004-02-08T13:13:00.000+11:00

Writing Haven't written for awhile, which is bad. I've just posted a session report for last week's Rogue Trooper game to Spielfrieks, Nigglybits and Boardgamegeek. I don't feel I've been participating in the games forums as much as I should, considering how much they've returned to me. The experience with Short and Sweet and the free workshop I got out of it has encouraged me to work on my

2003-12-23T06:16:00.000+11:00

Short and Sweet Results We got onto the short list, but not into the final cut. Still, that's not bad for a play Brett and I wrote in one night. Next time we'll spend two nights on it.

2003-12-17T06:25:00.000+11:00

Ace In the Hole So they've captured Saddam Hussein. Hope he can tell the US where Usama Bin Laden is.

2003-12-12T06:38:00.000+11:00

Blog needs work Pointing out the bleeding obvious. This new fangled "title" field doesn't seem to translate into the webpage properly (what I see in the below pane is not what I get through Mozilla. I also need to add a chat facility. Posting more would be good too.

Here's some photos of us

2003-12-11T11:09:00.000+11:00

Here's some photos of us from Ian's website from a Halloween party we attended (around the middle of the page)

Time to get back into blogging

2003-12-11T11:03:00.000+11:00

Time to get back into blogging Ian has a blog - my wife Llyn has got into contact with another friend through their blog so this may be worth keeping up, as it seems to bring people together.

Game last night

2003-12-11T10:58:00.000+11:00

Game last night I've been trying to set up a new gaming group with my old friends Neil and Michael (what a sparse webpage) to replace the PGA when that folds after Pat leaves for England. Last night we played the ultimate Knizia game Tigris and Euphrates. I came first, but Neil came a close second (there was something like two points between us.) Both Neil and Michael enjoyed the game, and next

2003-10-07T10:05:00.000+10:00

Haven't posted in over two months But I have won a writing competition and had a story published. So there.

2003-08-05T08:20:00.000+10:00

Jobs for the Boy? John Howard's son a queue-jumper? Say it isn't so!

2003-08-05T06:39:00.000+10:00

Apology It's been almost a month since I last posted. I know I've been sick, but this is ridiculous. I've been spending too much time on the Net buying stuff (predominately DVDs) than creating content. John Howard will be pleased. Travelling Birds [movie] I saw this last weekend in Canberra. The film makers film migrating birds (the original title is "Winged Migration" which is much better)

2003-07-16T09:07:00.000+10:00

Now it can be told [tv, ethics] Why reality television is unethical.

2003-07-11T14:55:00.000+10:00

How to alter votes electronically [computer, politics] Here's a quick guide. Lucky no-one's tried it before. Hey, wait!

2003-07-08T09:01:00.000+10:00

Too cool [Net] (I'm going to use genre headings from now on.) Now NASA has the first blog from space.

2003-06-30T08:40:00.000+10:00

I didn't know irony was dead. Until I didn't read this article.

2003-06-27T08:41:00.000+10:00

And now for a short test So, when they talk about the Middle East on the news, do you know which countries they're talking about and where they are? BTW I did really badly at this.

2003-06-27T06:49:00.000+10:00

More on Brights Plastic has a discussion on the Dawkins piece. Most of them are against it. Then again, most of them are American. Interesting fact cited - a poll in 2000 indicated that 95% of Americans would vote for a black president, but under 50% would vote for an aetheist. There's obviously still some work to do.

2003-06-23T09:04:00.000+10:00

Consciousness Raising Richard Dawkins has an interesting piece in the Guardian about a meme to raise people's consciousness regarding religion. By the way, I'm a bright too.

2003-06-20T09:22:00.000+10:00

Records Management Humour Okay, so my profession is not exactly known for its sense of humour.

2003-06-18T08:58:00.000+10:00

Last Film Seen: 24 Hour Party People The history of Factory Records which brought the world Joy Division, New Order and The Happy Mondays. Steve Coogan stars as Tony Wilson (although, in one of the many asides during the film, he says "The film isn't about me at all") who appears to be the Mancunian version of Malcolm McLaren. Very funny and, from my friend Nat's impromptu commentary,

2003-06-17T10:06:00.000+10:00

:( So Labour have had their leadership challenge, to no real effect. A choice between Crean and Beazley to my mind is like the choice a hitman makes to his victim - "Do you want it in the head or the heart?". We can now go back to waiting for the Liberal party to win the next election and becoming even more unaccountable. Sometimes I really, really hate this country.

2003-06-15T11:52:00.000+10:00

New Movies I Have Seen This is to catch up on a huge backlog of films that I should have reviewed earlier. The Marvel Films The Hulk Okay, it hasn't been released yet, but in the trailer- he picks up a tank by the gun barrel and tosses it - Just like the real Hulk - I am so there! X2 So full of eye candy, my pupils felt like throwing up afterwards. Suffers from the first ten minutes being

2003-06-12T06:53:00.000+10:00

Postscript to Holiday Of course my US visa was waiting for me when I got home. Oh, ha ha God...

2003-06-11T15:01:00.000+10:00

Back from Holiday Just got back from overseas. Here are the e-mails we sent out from our trip - Our trip - Paris - Day 2 Dear All, I'm just trying to get used to this French keyboard, dang it. It also doesn't seem to want to do line returns. Anyway, we're just starting our second full day in Paris. After a very long and fortunately uneventful flight we arrived in Paris to find a nationwide

2003-03-31T08:22:00.000+10:00

I'll come back to this... But I wanted to put it in here while I still remembered. This is a quote from an Ian Watson article on AI: The subjective nature of awareness A major assumption about AIs in the popular mind and in entertainment is that they will indeed be conscious and will have subjective experiences. The common image of an AI is one of self-awareness, not merely superintelligence.

2003-03-25T17:43:00.000+11:00

Thoughts on this year's Oscars My excuse is; I was only watching it because a friend was nominated. By lunchtime I knew he hadn't won, but we decided to go to his sister's house to watch the awards anyway. Without further ado, here are my awards for this year's Oscars: Best Performance by Banquo's Ghost Michael Moore Most in need of a good feed and a slap Renee Zellweger Best Reason

2003-03-24T06:24:00.000+11:00

Ugly Puppets I've always loved puppets, though these ones may have to get by on their personality

2003-03-21T10:09:00.000+11:00

War takes its toll on Uni students Something to do whilst the bombs are falling.

2003-03-21T08:48:00.000+11:00

The Last Sane Man in England If only we had politicians of ">this calibre in Australia... It helps that he has the same name as one of my favourite authors - not this one, but this one [hmmm, doesn't seem to be a decent website for him...]

2003-03-21T08:24:00.000+11:00

Toss the Bums Out! According to Geoff Kitney of the SMH some people don't seem to know there's a war on.

2003-03-21T06:40:00.000+11:00

War! What is it good for? How the hell would I know? Ask someone who's there or someone else who's possibly there.