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A conglomeration of stuff, from the front page of my site.

Front page archive.

A loose collection of links, thoughts, quotes and other crazy stuff, that originally appeared on the front page of this site, that I think is worth archiving!

October 2003

27.10.03 8:50ESDST

Tomorrow night, Tuesday, sees the annual student show opening at Glen Eira Arts Complex in Caulfield, here's a timely article on a current show at the MCA in Sydney, about the hidden depths of collections. How many of our students here will go on to bigger things? Will I one day be able to say proudly, “I taught that student”, should I even think that is it not better to have simply been a guide to a person on their journey to the destination they may only discover themselves after many years of searching? I'm going to quote a student today, on something as simple as coffee, “...ah coffee, nothing makes me smile more than a good cup of coffee, black, as black as death, sweet , sweet as love”. Ah indeed coffee!

Finally, finally daylight saving has arrived, now when I lay in bed listening to the birds sing in the morning I no longer need to feel guilty about waking so early!

25.10.03 6:49 EST

our humble vegie patch

Last night, Friday, saw me doing a couple of rare things. One sit quietly in the backyard and sip a beer with some of my favorite music. Two sit in the backyard with my laptop surfing and sipping a beer quietly, [using Safari™ of course]. Rounded off the night with a small bbq, just the 2 of us, yummo!

Haven't had a rant for a while so here goes. It's Saturday morning here as I write this...early. I have spent the last 30 to 40 minutes trying to connect to the internet. My computer keeps saying user authentication failed, I have checked and rechecked my settings all is ok at this end. Seeing as neither account will let me go online I am and al my settings are OK, I am assuming that the problem is with my provider. Now I personally and my work have used this particular provider for several years, and have been most satisfied. Until this morning that is! A phone call to the help desk tells me that no-one will be in the office until 10:00am! Given that the WWW is a 24/7 thing, why can't these people at least have extended hours like 5:00am to 11:00pm or an emergency number for after hours problems? Of course the real joke is, this won't even make it online until I can get a connection again, so perhaps a waste of breath.

Anyway I also added new images to the appropriate galleries. These being, 126 Instamatic,and Nokia mobile phone.

24.10.03 14:23 EST

The ultimate photographers resource, WOW!

Am reading a fab little book picked up recently at Printed Image Bookshop in Prahran, [one of my favorite bookshops in town]. Wonderful wonderful stuff. It's a small publication that Phaidon have published, part of a series actually, called 55's. Each has a small essay on an individual artist and 55 of their most notable images. This one is on one of my favorite photographers Ralph-Eugene Meatyard. I have gathered a handful of interesting little facts about him from this book, such as his passion for Jazz music, his interest in eastern religions, his interest in poetry especially beat poetry, and his attention to detail when it came to keeping details of his extensive record collection. But never mind all that check out his imagery!

Photoshop tutorials and workshop dates for the summer have been finalised. One class is already booked out!

23.10.03 16:19 EST

Oh boy just got the machine back that I use to write all this stuff on, yes my trusty old Ti Powerbook G4. Talk about withdrawals! At least I got to do some stuff that I had been putting off for ages, such as the weeding of the vegie patch in the backyard. The recent CSS workshop run by John from Westciv was *brilliant* thanks again John! Of course as a consequence this site will soon be seeing yet another facelift. Melbourne is going through it's usual 4 seasons in one day stuff— again . Saturday during the workshop it was real hard to stay inside with such awesome weather. To top it off our good friends, Pete and Sue purchased a weber. So Sunday I had a slight budgie mouth. The other flip side to not having my notebook, I had to COMPLETELY hand code anything I wanted to try and apply after attending the class. Wow talk about tedious, made me appreciate the fab software package StyleMaster 3.0

15.10.03 18:25 EST

More on digital prints and photography, hmm, makes me kinda wonder about the future of photographic education? Will all this stuff make more or less work for some one like me — an educator who specialises in creative image making? Speaking of digital photography, where does this image and its companion fit into the notion of memory and emotional attachment?

Two days running now,it's almost been thong weather, that's the chinese work boot kind, not the fashionable underwear kind!

Updated Photoshop Workshop/ Tutorial dates for Summer 2003/04, book your place in the workshops.

Do you use a digital camera to capture those precious memories? Here's a warning!

 

12.10.03 17:59 EST

Purrumbete homstead
Just returned from a big weekend away to the wonderful B&B 'Purrumbete' in the Western District of Victoria. Our hosts Anne and Max put on a great weekend for us. Firstly it's a 4 star joint! Secondly it's location is impeccable. Thirdly I didn't open/touch my laptop till we returned, see above date. So what can I say, hmm plenty.

Upon our arrival we were greeted by one of our hosts for the weekend, Anne. She promptly showed us into the main entry area. This is an area of the house, the main house of a former huge local farming empire, that houses some amazing Art Nouveau and the size of this has got to be seen to be believed! Lots of wood too, with a real homely feel about it. We were then shown to our room and again stately, huge, and tastefully decorated. The bed alone was enormous, and very comfortable. The first night saw us head into town [Camperdown] for our evening meal.

A late morning breakfast and a wander around the grounds, with lots of snaps. Then off to check out the countryside. After our drive around we headed back to the house for dinner. This is when the fun began.

Heard of the saying...“ better to keep your mouth shut and let people think your stupid, than open it and let them know you are”? Well that one was brought right home on Saturday night at the dinner table. As I sat and listened to several people, some of whom were from Sydney, I was flabbergasted as these folks prattled on in the most self absorbed manner ever imaginable. Disbelief, amazement are some the thoughts that ran through my head. Then amusement set in, I sat back and enjoyed the meal and let them do all the talking.

Thankfully the rest of the weekend was most enjoyable. We spent most of Saturday scoping out the surrounding areas, as well a small portion of the shipwreck coast. Shot shitloads too, 150+ digital shots, and 3 rolls of 120 on the school Hasseblad, [a superb piece of engineered machinery I must say]! Sunday we drifted back to Melbourne via Ballarat after stopping off at a Junk shop just down the road from Purembete Homestead.

All in all a most enjoyable weekend, Thank you Anne, thank you Max.

08.10.03 8:22 EST

more digi camera images
First day off for term 4 [ the end is in site ] what started out as a quick check back on some of my bookmarks, the sandwich project in particular, I uncovered a wealth of activist sites that appeal to my closet socialism. Mostly these sites are critical of American Foreign Policy from a variety of different angles but one that appears to be a Neo-conservative [ the title alone freaks me out,New American Century dot Org! site does not seem to read that way? And one that lists some background on censored news articles from America. My favourite though is Disinfopedia, a site that is a...

“...collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests .”

What makes this site so special is...

“Anyone, including you , can edit any article right now. See the Disinfopedia FAQ for more background information about the project. Read the help page and experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can use and contribute to the Disinfopedia. ”

Reading a couple of the articles in the censorship site I mentioned above makes me ask the question. How difficult is going to be for future generations to sort the dross from fact in this Information overloaded era we live in?

On a lighter note , my 126 images have made their way onto that good old fashioned medium PAPER, I hope to have them hanging in a cafe near us before the end of the year, stay tuned!

05.10.03 9:55 EST

Sunday am, after 1 1/2 hours surfing, collected a nice suite of photography links. Without a doubt one of the best sites on the net is About.com's photography section, then I stumbled across a site I'd not seen before, Artdaily with it's own photography links sections, very comprehensive. The FSA was an important photography group between the wars, the American Government department responsible for the archives of this collection of images has placed 16,000 black and white images online with more to come, the part I found most interesting? There is a large colour section as well from the same era. One of the most intriguing aspects of photography for me as both an artist and teacher is the double edged sword of reality depicted that is photography. From about.com's front photography page I stumbled across an article that questions the ideas behind photography as a objective tool used to document the world. A nice feature of this site— the document was offered as a pdf file which at 24 pages made for a useful teaching resource later on. While we are on the subject of photography links, who can forget the masters of photography web site?

04.10.03 18:16 EST

Big update this weekend, the 126 images I took earlier last week are now on line, stay tuned for the upcoming real life exhibition.

September 2003

29.09.03 12:14 EST

Once again an update in the digital galleries, both the “Nokia” Phone gallery and “...as a log book stands to a journey”. A brief excursion outside on Saturday not only froze my nuts off so to speak but also allowed me some time to wander around and make some images, the digital ones are online as usual, the 126 ones are being processed as I type, later this week or early next may see another update there. The rest of Saturday went without a hitch, no exciting travel destinations though, and if it wasn't for one person I may have not found out the winner until the Sunday night news, like last year. The rest of the day spent sorting out issues with my work site, which now has it's own domain, and all associated benefits from this, such as real web statistics, customizable feedback forms, much much more disk space, and an e-mail address for each staff member that actually reflects the domain name we are using!

27.09.03 15:16 EST

spring has sprungToday is the Saturday I most dread all year. To top it off this year, I am stuck in Melbourne! So while casually surfing the Age online for a morning fix of e-news, I stumbled across an article, that begins to explain my loathing of the colosseum spectacle that AFL is. Of course about halfway through the article I realised that the writer would of course eventually, be singing the praise of a corporate sponsored game that keeps the middle classes minds focused on the issues that are the easiest to deal with rather than the tough issues.........death/murder, sexism , general unrest and maltreatment of many people world wide, or good old fashioned vandalism. But then there's always a good day out in the shops to get your mind off things too terrible to think about. Not to worry I will no doubt achieve MANY things I have been meaning to get done around the house today, or maybe I catch a good movie around 1:30, 2:00 pm, who knows!

Nice article on a current New York Photography exhibition of Dageurrotypes

On a brighter note, live on the east coast of Australia? Got the basics of CSS based development down, or even up to speed but want to start developing sophisticated web page layouts using CSS2? Need to brush up on CSS positioning? We have the answer!

26.09.03 15:10 EST

FWIW, here's some useful stuff! Also, FWIW, am now time stamping/dating these sporadic entries!

As an aside I am now surfing with Safari, hee hee surfing safari get it!

25.09.03 9:11 EST

Interesting piece on an Artist who I'd nearly forgotten about, how's this for a final quote when asked about artistic freedom...

“That's not a luxury, it's a curse! It's like the unlimited freedom of the internet. Most of it produces garbage. We secretly desire less freedom, or at least fewer choices, not more.”

Yehaa! It's nearly thong season!

Recently received a DVD player as part of a Mobile Phone deal for Nik, now a list of films on DVD that I would one day like to own.

Switched to OSX.2. Hmm looks cool, slightly different way of thinking at the root level so to speak, and of course even though I got it as a FREE app it means many of the apps I am used to using should really be updated. Thankfully I had a disk lying around with a whole bunch of other browsers on it. So I could at least start browsing with Moz for OSX.

Post Modernism gone mad? Reading 'PostModernism a very short introduction' by Christopher Butler, pub Oxford University Press. What a little gem —so far. Here's a quote from the front of the book,[taken form some other POMO tome] that was given a rather special award; second prize in the annual bad writing contest promoted by the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature.

“If for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline, soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories superstition, spurious authorities and classification can be seen as the desperate effort to ‘normalise’ normally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.”

What tha.......?!

DVD listing of Films and TV shows I would like to eventually on, current as of Mid Septemeber 2003 in no particular order! If anyone REALLY knows films and directors they may see a pattern here...at a certain point. You see I needed to jog my memory and consulted a book that listed Directors alphabeticaly. Can you spot the pattern?

Updated photography galleries:- 126, the mobile phone gallery, and the ubiquitous humour section.

What is your birth date?

Quote of the week...“what cannot be seen becomes as tantalizing as what can. It is always a question of seeing and un-seeing, happening and not happening”— Hannah Allen, photographer Brooklyn, N.Y.

My fixation with my 126 instamatic camera at the moment is panning out into some serious research. Liz Welch has edited an interesting book that looks at many facets of image making including the genre of the snapshot. Who knows where this will lead?

When I read articles about the worldwide hatred of the USA, I am reminded of the lyrics to one of my favourite T.I.S.M songs!  Which reminds me of another song... War— what is it good for....?

Site stats show significant traffic from a couple of South Mercian sites...suitably impressed that someone else visits here occasionally? After a little reflection and closer examination of my statistics however, it has occurred to me that the attraction of these folks from South American was actually the page that holds an archived series of images about the development of Adobe Photoshop™ Tool palette. It goes without saying that this stuff I have no copyright over, I just put it on my site for educational purposes — me being a teacher/artist/photographer and all you know. So thanks for dropping on by come again soon and check out my gallery of photographic art!

Win! Free Browser Cam for a year thanks to Browser Stakes! Go in the draw for a chance to win a free years subscription to Browser Cam at Blogstakes.com for a year, Browser Cam a service that permits designers preview their sites in multiple browsers at once with out installing multiple browsers on your local machine.

Movie Marathon this weekend - [06.09.03], thanks to Telstra and their current offer of a DVD/Video player when signing up for a 2 year contract. We watched, Australian Rules, Adaptation, One hour Photo, and several others! Why is is that in movies like Australian Rules that Director goes the soft cock option and automatically makes the father the brute, has in the entire history of mankind there never been a mother or sibling of either gender that has committed mental or physical torture on a younger family member?

Interactive ART?

Why do we leave the toughest questions to the last?

More on the reason this site looks the way it does? mo

Aaron Siskind retrospective exhibtion opens soon, and 'ol Uncle Ansel has one that sounds like it'll be a bit different too!

August 2003

see my new toy!
Art oddity #2, Taxi trunk disgorges precious vintage prints and other photographic art!

New - toys are always good! A feast to behold—and this one—holds soooo... many secrets within! The other new toy [sadly it's not mine!], a Canon G5, soon some pictures from it.

Reading? Cruel and Tender, exhibition catalogue, and re-reading some Robert Adams, who is so good at...balancing; love and disappointment!

Art oddity #1, grass and photos?