Snippets #18: it's that time of year again...

a little over a year ago i sat down to say thanks to number of people who had, in one way or another, influenced my life for the better... whether they'd intended to or not. it's been a long year since then and i've gone through some shit between then and now and while i'd like to stand tall and say i got myself through it... well, if i did i'd be lying. we move through each other's lives, steps in a dance that brings us together for seconds or decades, bouncing off each other, each of us a particle in life's Brownian Motion.

so here's to those i've met and remembered and those i've forgotten, to those you cursed me with their friendship and those who blessed me with hatred, to those who got me drunk and those who kept me alive... especially when they're the one and the same.

Pietre - for showing me just how easy it was to go out for the evening with someone i'd met 5 minutes beforehand.
Dad and my Sister - for showing me how high you can rise and how far you can fall.
Andrew - for getting drunk with me in 3 different countries.
Jacq and Nick - for helping me get back into circus tricks.
Speedfox, Daywalker, Cathy H and The Greyman - for being reliably up for a beer, sitting on the kerb outside the Red Lion and making my last few months in London awesome to the max.
Shadow - for always having something to teach and something to learn, for making my phone ring and always having a pot of tea on the go.
Sandra - for making it so easy to come back to Canberra.
Andrew Duggan - because firing me absolutely made my day, week, month and year.
Rachel - for making my last job interesting and being a particularly awesome reference.
Matt - for showing me it CAN be done, and putting up with my shit at his wedding. 
Moonbug - for hanging out with me in yet another part of the world. where next?
Ondine - for being remarkably adaptable.
Shaalwyd - for always having an available ear and turning my life upside down in your driveway.
Matthias - fur Spasse auf Berlin. 
Mal - for giving me absolutely no excuse for not being able to play Wish You Were Here.
MCG - for being part of some of my more entertaining stories and taking me to see the Little Mermaid. 
The Boy - for never, ever changing.
Brit Pete - for giving my old leather jacket a good home.
Cesky Krumlov - for being such a lovely little town with such great, cheap beer.
Tiernan - for ensuring that there's someone out there who's even crazier and more inappropriate than i am.
Emma - for eliminating the "boring" from my life just when things were starting to get dull, and preventing me from giving up my gypsy lifestyle just yet...

you never can fit it all in, just say what you can. whenever you try to write the "definitive list" of anything you'll finish off, stop your laptop and be lying in bed trying to sleep when you realise you forgot something obvious. as per last year, anyone left off the list can whinge at me directly if so inclined, or alternatively are welcome to take the "go fuck yourself" option: the choice is yours...

Snippet #17: on outdoing yourself...

i have a reputation when it comes to weddings, primarily that of being a shit-stirrer of the highest order. to date, i've been a Bride's Man once, Best Man twice and MC thrice. i've given speeches on four different occasions where i've generally insulted one or both of the members of the couple, questioned the bride's sanity, even expressed surprise that the bride was wearing white on the day. i've referred to the groom as being "a fat, useless layabout who'd never amount to anything". i've likened commitment to handcuffs and relationships to pits of despair that are doomed to failure... and somehow i've always got away with it. i've written the word "FUCK" in confetti. i've sold cigars to the groom's party. i've jokingly suggested that i'd show the bride's little sister a good time. and the groom's aunt. i've sung the first verse of "What about me" while using my kid brother as a prop. in short, i have a penchant for shennanigans, but somehow people keep inviting me to their weddings and giving me a microphone or a stage.

Matt & Julia got married yesterday in the nicest ceremony i've seen in a long time, and the first in may years that has had absolutely no religious over- or under-tone. it was solemn, and joyful, and completely perfect for who they are. of course, i was doing my best to keep the jokes flowing and Matt distracted. we just had to get him through to the kiss, and when he did it was like the clenched stillness lifted and a cool breeze blew through the clearing. from there on it was just a reception with too much beer and wine and all was joy.

we eat and people are having a great time, rolling into speeches which everyone kept short and sweet. i'd like to hope that it looked like i had more of a plan than i did - i more or less worked out the order of events as the evening went on. i got everyone's attention and cracked jokes between speakers. Julia's dad then Matt's mum, Elise as Julia's Matron of Honour then me as Best Man, after which i asked if anyone else wanted to say anything at which point Tiernan leapt to his feet and was informed that no, he was NOT permitted to speak. Julia un-ban-hammered him for a couple of minutes, until he started getting inappropriate and i ushered him back to his seat (we'd rehearsed it beforehand, when they told me i wasn't to let him speak. i couldn't help it - it was too good an opportunity to miss). Marcia took her cue and raised a toast before Matt & Jules made a show of cutting one of the 100 cupcakes Jules had made the day before, and with all the other formalities done i went to hit Go on the MP3 player Matt had given me for the Bridal Dance. i get it started and they start to dance awkwardly, so distracted by the fact that they're dancing in front of 87 of their friends and family that that it takes them a moment before they realise that what they're dancing to is not, in fact, Phoenix by The Butterfly Effect. i'm standing by the jukebox with a growing grin on my face as i watch them stop, ears pricked up, trying to work out what's wrong, the realisation dawning on them when the lyrics start

"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..."

that they have just fallen victim, at their own wedding, to a RickRolling.

i've told this to people over and people ask me how i'm still breathing. how the fuck did i survive? to be honest, they reacted exactly how i'd expected them to: i got a high-five and a hug, after which i legged it. see, when i'd seen Rick Astley on the list on Matt's Creative i couldn't help myself. i knew i just had to. the crowd seemed divided into the camp who had no idea what was going on, the group who thought that "Never Gonna Give You Up" is a lovely song and the rest of them who got the joke. by my reckoning it's the biggest, maddest thing i've ever managed to pull off at a wedding. the trick now is going to be finding some way of beating it.

the trick, you see, is to be audacious without being out-and-out insulting, make sure your gags are appropriate to the people you're playing them on and above all: make sure they're utterly harmless. i've gotta say tho, that i'm feeling pretty good about that one. there can't be too many peopel who can say that they RickRolled a wedding and by my reckoning this will keep my infamy-rating high for quite some time to come...

Snippets #16: time and travel take their toll on your tools...

the first thing to go was my laptop hard drive. the old Toshiba drive had taken some knocks and bumps in its life even before i stuck in my Eee last year and walking 100 metres back to the hostel after war-walking (looking for unsecured wifi connections) without shutting the machine down did it in (damn old-school, non shock-locking drives). i've patched it up and kept it limping along ever since, but not before it ate ~20 of my photos from the days previous so i know i can't trust it to store important data from now on. if i had access to my equipment i could set it aside and run a looped diagnostic over the course of a couple of days, but i need it too much and too often to have it out of action for that long.

i broke my specs in Paris - 5 years i've had those: so long that i can't even remember what i had before. they snapped on one side of the bridge. something most people don't realise is that titanium is work-hardened, which means that the more you bend and flex it the more brittle it becomes until when, one day, you're straightening them outside the Sacre Coeur it shears, leaving you with prescription sunglasses as your only way of seeing more than just a blur.

my camera's been getting progressively more and more beaten up, and there's now dust between the lenses which shows up as dark fleks in some of my photos. i'm still not sure how i'm going to clean that out, although i may spend some time exploring with my screwdrivers (i packed one small philips-head and small flat-head jeweller's screwdriver in my backpack in case i needed to mend something).

my cheap-arse shorts that i picked up in Primark for something like 6 quid have started tearing on the left-hand side between the pockets, and there's a rough patch on the left buttock from where my shoulder bag rubs against them. they've got a date with a skip when i get back to London... or better maybe: a ritual burning. i haven't had one of those in ages...

my PSD (Personal Sanity Device) died a death in Krakow - i'd forgotten that it was in the pocket of my shorts and it fell 2 metres onto the tiled floor of the shower and decided that it didn't want to boot anymore. i spent an hour that afternoon gently prising it open, reseating the memory module (the memory's not soldered onto the mainboard on this model and it had come loose) and reconstructing it to get it working again. it's scratched up more than it was before, but it's making noise again which is all i care about.

the Merrell shoes i bought on my first trip to Singapore for a bargain are starting to give - the stiching's finally going, the lining in the heel has worn through on the left one and the innersoles are so well conformed to my foot that i expect they'd cripple anyone else who tried to wear them. they've lasted me through something like 18 countries and a rough guestimation has them on my feet for over 1000km worth of walking. still, i have the feeling they're also going to want a burning before the year's out.

operating life is usually measured in time - a fridge will work for, say, 15 years before it needs servicing, or the compressor needs replacing. an engine is good for 10 years before it needs servicing. we think in how many years before something needs to be thrown out or repaired. in the aerospace industry things are measured in hours of operational use, which is really far more accurate. if i bought an mp3 player, used it once a week for an hour and packed away nicely in between it'd never get damaged or fall apart, and it'd finally die when the battery broke down, but that's not really the point, is it? what's the point of having something useful if you keep it wrapped in cotton wool and never use it? in real life i'm reasonably nice to my gear, and it lasts longer. while traveling i've been pretty hard on my kit, and in general it's stood up pretty well, especially bearing in mind the beating it's taken. i try to be as nice to it as i can be... it just seems that this life comes with a surprisingly increased level of entrophy. run around the place with a backpack and things are going to take a few knocks and bumps. i know i have.

last night i managed to fall backwards down a steep flight of steps, sliding on my back with my Eee clutched to my chest so that it wouldn't get smashed, keeping my head up so that i took the blows from the steps on my shoulders. today my back's a stiff, bruised mess, but nothing's broken and i'll heal - a smashed laptop screen's not the sort of thing i can easily replace on the run. i have a persistent cough that have been following me since Barcelona and a runny nose i've had since Interlaken. too many skipped meals and too much expedient, cheap food mean that i'm popping through the last of my multivitamins to try to keep myself in vaguely working order. i don't have the time or resources to look after myself properly if i want to cover the amount ground i've committed myself to, and i'm loathe to pay exhorbident prices for food in tourist locations which, to be honest, is where i wind up most of the time. something's going to give, but in the meantime i keep moving in the hope that i can keep ahead of the sickness-monster chasing me and i'll be able to steer clear until i'm done and have the time to spend a couple of days in bed.

living on the road has its toll. double my budget and i'd be able to run at a more comfortable pace. take more time and maybe cook for myself every once in a while, or eat better when i'm out. you know i wouldn't tho - double my budget and i'd double my distance and make even greater sacrifices so that i could get even further across the map. i just hope i manage to not break anything else i can't fix. or easily replace... which reminds me that i need to wander into town and see if i can find some two-part epoxy for my specs. it'd be nice to be able to see at night again...

Snippets #15: on the right noise for he right time...

when i was sitting on the train from Lisbon to Sintra, way back at the beginning of my trip, i pulled out my PSD, plugged my wraparound headphones in and hit the Play button on some Parkway Drive. i don't usually listen to music when i'm traveling - my ears are 1/6 of my sensory perception, and almost as important to my experience of a place as what it looks or smells or tastes like. if you've got headphones drowning out the sound of a place, how are you going to notice the hum of the Eurostar as it leaves the station at St Pancras, or the sweet whine of the violin the man's playing on the Paris Metro, the calls of the market vendors in Fyshwick, or the boys busking with cellos in the street in Bruges, the snatches of English overheard that tell you here's someone i might be able to talk to, or the horn of the bus that's about to hit you in Barcelona because you looked the wrong way before crossing the street? everywhere has its sound, each language its own tone - hot chili Portugese blur, hyperactive mania of excited Spanish, the musical sexiness of French or the manic staccato of Cantonese. it's part of each place's unique signature.

but somehow despite it being the 3rd day (if you count the last day running around London, followed by my night in Heathrow) of my trip, it felt like forever since i'd chilled out with some music, and some noise always helps to ease the long periods of time spent sitting, waiting, getting your corpus from one place to another. i didn't select Parkway Drive per se - i'd been listening to it so much in London that it was an automatic response, but somehow after Romance Is Dead had been playing for a minute or so and i realised that it was all wrong for the situation, and i pondered this while i sat and watched Lisbon roll past, become countryside and eventually evolve into mountains. Parkway Drive is a loud metal band from the east coast of Australia - loud and angry, fast-paced and screamy. it's music for angry young men who say "Fuck" a lot. music for when you're living in a city and have to deal with the amount of shit a metropolis like London throws at you, when you're surrounded by souless zombies living the same day over and over and over, dealing with the day-to-day drudgery of Real Life, struggling to maintain some semblance of spark in your soul. somehow it just didn't suit my new world of wandering Europe, in a new bed every couple of days with my home on my back, a shoulder bag full of city maps, unfamiliar streets and something new around every corner.

Andy Mckee plays me to sleep when i'm on trains and planes. Death Cab For Cutie sing to me while i blog more often than noot. Wish You Were Here by Incubus soothes my mind when i'm thinking of home and missing my people. Pink Floyd when i want some soul. Disturbed or Parkway Drive when i want to get charged up and energetic. The Cure when i'm feeling melancholy. right now Bloc Party are being English in my ears, wistful and mournful, but bouncy and exuberant all at the same time (i discovered Plans off the Silent Alarm album by accident yesterday and this evening it's hit the spot perfectly while i nagivated the Berlin U-bahn back to my hostel). Parkway Drive came back when i was in Bruges when i was feeling weary and fucked, walking the streets more because i felt like i should than because i really wanted to be anywhere but my bed with Carrion screaming on repeat, drilling into my skill and filling my tired bones with energy. i swear i grew 2 inches when i hit Play, my shoulders squared and my legs forgot they were exhausted. wandering the canals, my head wasn't in the game - i was still in Paris, sitting along the Seine at midnight, driving down the Cotter with the roof off my car and the William Shatner's cover of Common People cranked loud, walking into Dickson from O'Connor for dinner on a cool spring evening. i was tired and weary, quietly wishing i was home, ashamed of myself for not enjoying where i was or what i was doing more than i was, and adding some loud, angry noise to the mix kept me moving, exploring this faux-medieval town for a couple of hours until i felt like i'd done as much of it as i could possibly do.

i'd love to say that i've done all of this on my own - modern technology lets me brush fingertips with Home, too far out of reach to take hold of, but the most featherlight of touches that lets the feeling of warmth defeat the tyrany of distance, my 24 Hour Friends: people who are just as alone as you are and determined not to be, but sometimes it's enough to have a voice in your ears who reminds you why you're doing what you're doing, the value of it, the opportunity that's too good to be missed despite the cost to your health, your relationships, your savings account, lifting you up by your brain stem, dragging you forwards and making you hungry for more...

Snippets #14: you know you're a Londoner when...

you know exactly where to stand on the tube platform so you'll be set up just right for when you get off to change lines.
you check the Transport For London website for directions before you check Google Maps.
you stop minding that the pubs call for last orders at 10:45PM because it means you can still get the tube home.
the idea of owning your own car has become a somewhat alien concept.
you no longer laugh when you hear the name "Cockfosters" on the Piccadilly Line.
a 2 hour commute to work is something you'll live with.
you never, ever consider taking the Circle Line unless you're on a pub crawl.
you can get from anywhere to anywhere on foot at 3AM, just by reading the bus stops.
whenever you pass Trafalgar Square you think "bloody tourists".
you start thinking in miles rather than kilometres.
you know where East-17 got their name.
you instinctively know where to get the best chips within a mile radius of your house.
2 miles isn't THAT far to walk.
you pull out your mp3 player whenever you get on public transport, even when you're travelling with a group.
heading to Brighton for the day is nothing, but going to Shepherd's Bush to go shopping is a bit far, innit?
you don't bother carrying a book if you know you'll be traveling in peak times because you know there'll be a free newspaper to read.
you know the only two things you're allowed to say to a stranger on the tube are "excuse me" and "are you done with that paper?"
you can't remember how to tune a television because you don't own one and can't think of why you'd watch free-to-air anyway.
you firmly believe that anywhere past Zone 3 isn't really IN London.
you don't get upset when the pub's full because you know you can just go the one next door.
seeing the sun is more of a surprise than seeing naked women in the newspaper.
whenever you meet an Australian you think "not another one".
you stop expecting your beer to be ice cold and taste faintly of urine.
you consider any meal that costs less than £5 and fills you up to be a bargain.
you've stopped thinking about the exchange rate because it's too heartbreaking, but you can do it in your head if you have to.
you know exactly how far it is to the nearest Tesco or Sainsburys in steps.
you'd consider trying to carry a mattress home on public transport.
a flat that was advertised for rent more than 48 hours ago isn't worth calling about because you know it's already gone.
you can't understand why you can't find an ATM in other cities because you've already gone half-way around the block.
there's a public holiday coming up and you thought about going to Spain and Morocco before you even considered Liverpool or Bristol.
every time you hear someone refer to Milton Keynes you snigger.
it's raining. so?
you see a burst pipe spraying water down the street and you don't think of it as a criminal waste.
pasties and fried chicken have taken over from pies and pizza as your junk-food of choice.
you'll catch a tube anywhere, but avoid the overland at all costs.
you've developed a subtle disrespect for anyone who doesn't, or hasn't lived here themselves...

Snippets #13: on odd habits...

i've adopted some strange new modes of behavior in the last few months. creating a new life from scratch is a great method for reassessing whether you're doing what you do because it works in the here and now, or if you've just been doing for so long that it's ingrained. like pronouncing the 't' in '"often". or always having a diet coke with your meal. calling your girlfriend Jemima at the point of orgasm. some of it's completely inexplicable - for example, i've found that i tend to wake up at around the same time as Louise does most mornings. when she was working and getting up early i'd wake up either just before or after she headed to the bathroom to get dressed and say good morning, or make sure she was awake, then roll over and go to sleep. last week i did it again... except she didn't wake up until 12:30 in the afternoon. it was never a conscious thing, just something i'd fuzzily rembember having done when i woke up properly some time later. what's really odd is that she's been doing the same thing while i've been working - yelling at me to get up while i lie there looking at the numbers tick away on my mobile, then snoring away again by the time i'm out of the shower.

in the evenings when we eat together (we usually do), i'll usually do the cooking or preparation or oven-wrangling while she sits and keeps me company, then afterwards she'll wash up while i return the favour. i've taken to blogging down in the kitchen so that i can sit up typing late into the night while she goes to sleep, usually with a cup of tea, and i've become so used to it that i have difficulty collecting my thoughts to write when i'm up in the room even when she's up and about.

on the way to work i pick up a copy of the Metro and read it to save me from going through my book too quickly. on the way back to base-camp i sit and blog on the tube from Heathrow to Leicester Square while the people around me pretend not to stare at the stickers covering the lid of my Eee. in the mornings i always stand at the bus stop staring at the radar dish as it spins, wondering how much it weighs and time the spins in my head (~15RPM). in the afternoons i watch the planes take off and try to project how many must be leaving each hour (between 60 and 90).

i usually catch the bus into town in the interests of saving money, and even now i'm using an unlimited travelcard that makes the cost of the service irrelevant i still factor in the time it takes to use the bus and walk when i'm working out how to get anywhere. i've taken to hating on tourists who clog up the footpaths (even though i was one only a few months ago. no, i'm not still a tourist. i've got a lease on a place - i live here now), but i still look up at Nelson's statue in Trafalgar Square as i walk by and get slightly surprised that i'm actually here.

that said, when i'm sitting around bored my first instinct is still to call Sandra or Shadow, or Marcia and Rick, or Matt and Tiernan, or Jules. when i want to escape from the world it's always a bike i imagine myself on when i do. when i want a hug the same faces swim to the surface, shadows of my past who are long gone, but somehow still sitting over my shoulder whenever there's nothing else shedding light into my world.

in the first year after i left Perth i still used to think of it as Home. now when i think of Home i'm thinking of Canberra. when i go back to Canberra, will i be thinking of London - doomed to be eternally unfaithful to wherever i actually live? and will there come a day when the thought of freedom will be something other than the feeling of weight on my back and a pair of arms wrapped around my waist while i twist the throttle and point my front tyre at the horizon? now that i've cut myself loose am i ever going to consider the idea of settling down as anything more than a seocnd-best, if-all-else-fails contingency, or will i always be looking through Google Earth for the next destination?

it's odd - these little things. the habits you find you've picked up and the ones you can't leave behind. the thought processes that colour your judgement and you can't seem to shake. the things you catch yourself doing without thinking, or even being conscious of it and wonder why...

Snippets #12: in gratitude...

every once in a while it becomes appropriate to thank people for the little things they've done for you. far too often the smallest nudges can snowball quietly and imperceptibly, not becoming apparent until months, or sometimes years later. today i'd like to pay tribute to some of these, in the order in which i though of them:

AB - for trying with limited success to get me into Death Cab For Cutie (the unofficial soundtrack for my time in Scotland) all those years ago.
Rapunzel - for giving me a reason to pull Death Cab out of my collection and listen to it again.
SiJ - for telling me to bring an umbrella to Scotland, even if it did break after less than a day.
Matt - for convincing me to give Sharing Space by Cog another listen (it's become the unofficial soundtrack to my time in London).
Shadow - for filling my head with ideas of the UK, and keeping me on the straight and narrow when i've been headed off the rails.
The Boss - for looking the other way while Shadow and i have run amok and letting him look after my stuff.
The Boy - for proving that a lot of what i can't do is not in fact impossible.
Danae - for giving me something to hope for.
Louise - for making this trip survivable, and helping prevent me from turning into a total mess when it's all gone south.
Scott Mortimore aka ScuM (wherever on earth you are) - for showing me just how amazing music can be.
Sandra - for being someone i can say just about anything to when i have the need.
Cymun - for demonstrating how to stay positive when the sky's fallen in, and trying again and again to impress his taste in music on me.
Alex D - for helping me get set up and giving up her bedroom so that louise and i'd have a quiet place to stay.
Ondine - for reminding me that even the most serious people can go , and making me start writing again after years of neglect.
Sam from Sydney - for being someone to hang out with when i was all alone in a cold, wet place.
My Mum - for not complaining too much about all the swearing in my blog and providing much appreciated financial support.
Marcia - for always making an effort to do the right thing.
Moonbug - for having solid advice, especially when it comes to travelling.
Brad - for being a constant reminder that at least there's one person i'm superior to.
Amanda - for giving me the escape velocity i needed to break out, and inadvertently saving me from thinking i could never do any better.
Gordon Brown - for making my beers 4 pence cheaper.

that'll do for now. i've missed a lot of people out, but that's always going to happen. if you feel hard done by, let me know how i've neglected you and i'll be sure to amend, or provide appropriate derision.

Snippets #11: on walking in snow...

i don't know how many people out there care, or feel like they know this already, but i though i might share some of my recent learnings with others who come from the warmer climes.

walking in snow is hard fucking work. if you've ever run in loose dry sand you'll start to get the idea. like sand, in snow your feet sink. unlike sand, you pretty much need to lift your foot out of it before you can move on, and there's more chance of slipping. on a footpath the foot-traffic crushes it underfoot, and as it melts and freezes and melts and freezes it gets slippery under the layer of fresh flakes, so what looks like nice clean crunchy snow turns out to be ice which makes things treacherous. this means you wind up placing your weight straight down which, if you try it, makes for slow going, and requires you to use ankle and calf muscles you don't usually use. so far, i've found the best method is to look for bits of snow that are less-walked on because that's more likely to crunch and give you some decent traction.

of course if, like i was today, you find yourself in a field of sheep where the snow's the 2-odd foot deep, the only thing for it seems to take it slow and easy, and gods help you if have to walk up a steep slope. i had to stop and rest every 5-6 steps - that's how hard going it was.

the single best thing i can suggest is to make sure you leave the house with a pair of over-the-ankle boots. i like workboots, myself, since they're designed with non-slip soles and deep tread, but good hiking boots are fine too. just don't go in uggs - the soft leather will get waterlogged before long and then they'll pretty much fall apart. or trainers - there'll be melted water running down your instep before you know it.

oh, ballet slippers? don't make me fucking laugh... actually, do - i could use the cheering up. personally i can vouch for Steel Blue work boots. they've worked remarkably well so far...

Snippets #10: on UI complexity and the path to the ubergeek...

waiting for the bullet to hit has given me plenty of time to think, but little motivation to discuss. sitting on a 5-hour train ride, on the other hand, has given me opportunity and enough caffeine to wire up an entire LAN party.

i am an observant soul, and i observe many things that other people ignore. this isn't to say that a lot of detail doesn't pass me by, but i know that the unusual workings of my brain makes interesting connections sometimes. what i've been seeing in recent history has struck me as being so obvious that i'm amazed i never saw it before. when i was young and a noob my computer was pretty simple. it did what it did, which was about as much as i could make it do, and that was that. gradually as i became somewhat skilled my machine started to get whiz-bang. i had little programs to that made things pretty and perform every service under the sun - 3 different IM's, 4 different browsers, 3 CD Burning tools, a music player that put pretty patterns on the screen - you name it.

then, one day, i had to reinstall my OS because my hard drive died and i lost it all, so i rebuilt it. and again, and again as i switched and changed machines until eventually i just couldn't be bothered spending 12 hours reinstalling everything again every time it happened. since then my UI has become more and more austere, and since i got into linux, far less complicated in many respects. in fact, i was looking the other day at switching distro's to version advertised as being less complex still than the one i'm using at the moment.

this got me to thinking about some of the ubergeeks i've met over the years and how many of them eschew even a GUI a lot of the time and instead live primarily a text-based flatland. i remember sitting around uni wondering why they lived with such asceticism when it was so easy to rig up a pretty interface, which is when my inner eye turned outwards again and looked at some of what louise has been doing with her laptop - prettying up the desktop, adding tools, fiddling with RSS feeds... and i can't bring myself to care overly about any of it while i hack config files in a terminal window. it's almost like a bell-curve: as you get better and better your personal machine gets more and more complicated, until there comes a point where the complexity is in what you do, not how it looks and UI customisation drops away. louise is now where i was back at uni as she tracks the ever-improving average curve and i'm now assuming the role of the ubergeek with a ponytail, beard... and... a cheap sports car... with a penchant for alternative OS's...

oh fuck. i've grown up to become the arrogant, overconfident pricks i always hated. oh well, fuck it. at least i'm not massively overweight and i've had sex with actual women. i remember having a conversation with Spoon some years ago about how we were like the New Breed of geek - all the technical ability and aptitude but without anywhere near the social deficiencies that the previous generation was cursed with. we're stronger, faster, better, with an understanding of basic fucking hygiene and the ability to provide multiple-orgasms. we'll be superseded soon enough, but for the time being we're inheriting the world and we'll take no prisoners when the time comes to line up the Old Guard against the wall. we're kinder to our juniors than our predecessors and better able to evolve to cope with the changing environment and it's only a matter of time before those smelly sons of bitches get decommissioned.

all hail the nouveaugeek!

Snippets #9: on togetherness...

it started to dawn on me as my mind wandered through the leavings of half a dozen different cognitive loose-ends this evening that people seem to find it insanely important that i be one of them. not me specifically, i think, more just me because i happen to be there at the time. it shows in the sorts of questions i get asked - they usually lead with: "So -

are you a foodie then?" erm... i like food?
how long have you been vegan?"actually, i'm an omnivore. i just have a lot of vegan friends...
would you consider voting for the conservative party?" not until they all commit mass-suicide.
have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?" haven't you accepted me as yours?
... and so on.

it's always nice to know that you're part of something that's bigger than you are. that you're surrounded by likewise individuals. to be able to look around the room and think: "These are MY people. We share the same ideals. I am one of them," and know that you're all safe and happy because you all think alike. i can't say that i'm overly different - i've always enjoyed a member of a marginalised minority - in high school i was in the cynically-named "Cool Gang", at uni i was in the computer and science fiction clubs, in the real world i ride motorcycles and assume all of the self-indulgent airs that come with being fast and vulnerable. being part of a small marginalised subset makes you feel special, like you're superior to the rest of society because you stand apart and meeting other people who share your minority views or habits reinforces how much better you all are because of it.

it's all bullshit though, of couse. we all like to think we're so alternative with our shoices of food, esoteric conversations about the literary criticism of Battlestar Galactica and penchant for ludicrously dangerous forms of transport.

"Ooh, I'm so special because I choose to physically love more than one person."

no, you just like to sleep around and get laid as much as humanly possible! not that there's anything wrong with that or that i really give a crap! i don't really care if you're preferred way of getting off is to be surrounded by cossaks who jerk off all over you while you sit on a small pink stool in a frilly bonnet and insist on being called Sister Pauline while a midget in a gimp-suit shoves cucumbers up your date and a small lamb licks honey off your testicles. seriously, it's fascinating to hear about. the first time. ok, maybe the second so i can get a proper grip (pardon the pun) on the details. what i don't want to hear is how isolated you feel because society won't accept your "alternative" lifestyle repeated over and over again ad nauseum.

what shits me to tears is when people give me grief because i'm NOT in on their subculture, as if by not subscribing to their newsletter i'm automatically one of the opressors who want to stop them from doing what they want to do. seriously, as long as the midget's happy, or at least well paid, i don't give a fuck WHAT you have them shove up your arse, and as long as you don't expect me to watch or join in (and you showered before coming out to the pub) i'm sure we'll get along just fine.

i understand though. i really do. we all have things that we're interested in, and when you live a lifestyle that 67% of the rest of the people around you don't or won't understand you tend to become suspicious of the people you come across, assuming that they'll judge you for it. we all want to be accepted for who we are and the choices we make and as long as these choices don't get in the way of what other people want to do when there's no reason why we shouldn't be. having these little cliques and groups makes us feel included... validated... like we're not alone. very few people really want to be alone and throughout history people have tended to cleave towards likeminded communities - the christians in the first centuries AD, science fiction fans at conventions, gay people in King's Cross, it doesn't matter. i just would have hoped that by now we'd be at the point where people with non-mainstream lifestyles could be accepted, and likewise, where these people could be less cagey about those who DON'T.

right now i'm exploring what it's like to be an oddball without a scene. i've not searched for, nor found, an SF group here in London. i've not explored the social groups for any of my hobbies. i hang around with special-interst groups, but their interests aren't really mine. the people i hang with tend to be random rather than people who indulge in any of my particular obsessions, and the odd thing is that usually we're all pretty accepting of each other. i'm finding it pleasant that i'm "that guys who's into x, y and z" as opposed to "one of us" or "one of them", without any of the assumption that i must conform to a label... except for Australian. that one i've been wearing often, loudly and with pride. fortunately or unfortunately, with my accent it's inescapable so i might as well just go with it...

Snippets #8: on on multiculturalism (why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends)...

since i came here 3 months ago i've been making friends with people from all over the world. so far some of my best friends here include a Pakistani, a Dutch Canadian, a Korean Australian, a couple of Germans (one of whom was born in Bulgaria), a number of Australians and football team's worth of Brits. when the Randoms group last met up there was a French woman, a Danish lad, a Scot and an Irishman. over the weekend i've hung with all of these, plus a couple of Turkish and American girls. a lot of the conversations we have winds up being "Comparing Notes" - i'm interested in hearing about different parts of the worlds and who better to ask than someone who came from there? sometimes the conversations move on from that and sometimes they don't but somehow no one gives a crap about nationality. i've never seen anyone get narky - prime example: Greece and Turkey have been getting pissed off at each other for centuries. today i was drinking coffee with Adnan (Pakistani) and Marti (Turkish) and mentioned that my grandparents were from Greece. not a blink, not a frown, nothing.

Australia prides itself loudly on how it's an open, multicultural society but it seems that most people who move there keep to their own community groups, and they seem to bring a lot of their rivalries along with them. not that it's perfect here - the fighting in Gaza has caused protests here in London, complete with fights between pro- and anti-Israeli groups. my flatmates are Chinese and Malay and two of them haven't even bothered to learn any English. they have no interest in integration, which personally shits me to tears. for the same reason that i didn't want to move into a house full of Australians. i meet plenty of them around the place without trying and i'm as happy to hang with them as i am with anyone else who's good value.

the greatest joy of being in a different country is getting into the swing of the local culture and colour, even when a lot of that comes from a fuckload of other people who aren't from here. hell - it's one of the unexpected benefits of being here. it's proof, too, that if people see past the logo on the passport and deal with the person in front of them that we can all get along. that person may be a complete saint, a total cunt or anything in between, but you'll never know that if you judge by the accent...

Snippets #7: on pointless trains of thought...

join me, if you will (and if you won't you're welcome to fuck right off) in a quasi-rhetorical question.

say you're engaged in a Game in which you Play a Role where there are no save points so you can never revert to a previous instance. in this game there are many NPC's (Non-Player Characters). some are important to the plot and some spew irrelevant banter, but you don't know which is which until you talk to them. after talking to one of the Names (irrelevant NPC's don't have names) for a while you come to an optional conversation topic - a Side Quest we'll call it. you don't have to take this Side Quest - the plot will move along quite happily without it. through interraction and intuition (the game designers went for a high level of conversational realism) you know that regardless of how you direct the flow of the conversation it's always going to end in exactly the same way, so do you bother to actually initiate the Side Quest?

ok, now what if you happen to know that the game designers were canny devils who hate to see their hard work ignored like this and they designed the game such that if you DON'T take the Side Quest your character will take a permanent hit to their Constitution stat which will only be recovered once you complete the Quest, but if you DO you'll lose the use of the NPC in future missions? the Achievement awarded is the same either way because you let the Game trap you in this sinister little fork, so you know you're going to end up with the "You Fucking Wombat" Achievement (worth 10 Gamer Points and the derision of your peers) whatever you do.

if you say "Don't" i'm curious as to your reasoning, if you say "Do" then fuck you - what do you know? and if you say "Quit the Game before you get the Achievement so you can at least avoid the black mark on your Gamer Tag" can you please tell me when the fuck is Deux Ex 3 coming out? Invisible War was borderline-craptastic and last year's teaser trailer left me more excited than a 16 year old sneaking into his first strip-show...

Snippets #6: how to make yourself depressed in under 10 minutes...

Step 1: start going through your stuff looking for things to pack or clear out.
Step 2: find the box you've stowed all of your old keepsakes in for the last 20 years or so.
Step 3: start going through it all with a ruthless intensity, reading over all the old essays you wrote, the birthday cards, the faxed greetings, the letters kept from people who's faces you can't remember and context you can no longer recall, the first love letter you ever received, all of the concert tickets and cinema stubs and photos and awards, the stories you wrote, the blog entries handwritten on cards and sick-bags on aeroplanes, the annuals and reminders of exploits and adventures that happened so long ago that you have to think to remember what the relevance or significance of it all was.
Step 4: as you go, throw everything you think you can throw away into a pile and watch it spill and fall across the floor in drifts of off-white paper, faded by age and neglect.
Step 5: get sentimental and go back through the pile and put half of it back in the fucking box.
Step 6: look down at the condensed paper and plastic that represents the years that came before and start despairing as to what you're going to do with it all since you simply can't throw it the hell away.
Step 7: start beating your head against the wall.
Step 8: go back to Step 7...

Snippets #5: on disintegration...

a few years ago i started making a bit of a collage on the wall of my bedroom. it started as a couple of photos i'd printed out from a recent trip, then slowly grew as i added odds and ends i'd had lying around, or found along the way. when i moved i took a photo and recreated it in my new room, then promptly forgot about it. now i'm lying back in my room again, after getting back from Perth and it's been falling off the wall - one piece has curled up and lost half its blutack, others are hanging from a corner and others still have fallen completely behind the shelves.

that seems to be an apt metaphor for my life at the moment. i'm shattered. i'm glad to be back in canberra and all, but being back means that i have things to do. lots of them. far too many calls upon my time and energy, far too much to achieve and far too little energy to get it all done. right now is completely not the right time to call me and ask if i'm excited about flying around the world because right now i'd be just about as happy to add a smear of blood and brains to my collage - one final addition to my improv artwork. i'll feel better in the morning, i swear, but i have too much percolating around my brain to make any sense of it all and it's all falling apart.

tomorrow brings packing, after which i hope i'll feel better about it all. solid progress that i can see should make it all look a bit less daunting. the last week has reminded me how much i can cram into a day. knowing that the end is in sight - that all i have to do once i get to sydney is get on a fucking aeroplane, after which i'll have more or less all the time in the world... that's providing me with some peace. i just need to keep it all together until then. meanwhile, tomorrow i'm seeing a pretty little lass who likes to kiss me and i'm sure that'll perk me up no end... as long as i can get plenty done between now and then. one of the things i need to get done is sleep, and since that is the next thing on my Sisyphean task list i'm going to get right on it.

Snippets #4: on photons...

it's occurred to me over the last few months that my flatmates seem to be allergic to the dark. it's a character trait i've noticed here and there - i'll walk into the house and half the lights are on. they leave their bedroom light on despite the light switch being right on the door. hell, they'll even turn on the hall light even though the door to their room and the door to the living room are about a metre apart. maybe it just doesn't occur to them to turn them off? i don't know.

i'm in the opposite habit - i'm forever turning lights off around this place because... well, why have them on? the light i have in my room is a desk lamp with a CFL in it which is pointed directly at the wall. i read my book at night by the diffused light bouncing off the red feature wall and this serves me quite nicely. i rarely want for more than that. on the weekend i spent most of an evening in here with my young lass with just the LEDs in my laptop strobing along to the music playing in Winamp and this was more than we needed. if i need to visit the kitchen in the night there's usually a more than adequate amount of illumination from the LEDs on the various game consoles, or computers or just the moonlight coming in the back door.

i'm thinking that there's generally plenty of light around to get by if you know where to look. i know where everything is in the house and while i occasionally bump my knee into an errant chair, this is pretty rare. it's similarly rare that you'll find yourself in a place where there's no ambient light whatsoever but it seems that people have this need to banish the darkness. me, i think i prefer for it not to be so bright, and enjoy the ambiguity that the darkness brings and the interplay of light and shadow in my world. the idea of learning braille just so that i can read without having to turn on the light actually holds an odd fascination now i think about it...

i guess you could look at this as an allegory of some kind, but i'll leave those connections up to somebody else...

Snippets #3: on narcissism...

the thought occurred to me as i walked through the rain this evening, my worn old boots clumping on the pavement, that blogging has to be one of the most narcissistic endeavours accessible to the average citizen in the current milieu. it goes beyond the basic greed, pride and vanity that you used to see on the streets and pubs and clubs when you decided to head out on the town. it's a quiet whimper expressed by the hopeless and condemned, a desperate need for recognition, a misguided belief that there are people out there who truly love them for the delicate, utterly (banal) unique (mass-produced, Macdonalds-engorged) snowflake they are and want to know what they had for lunch today, what music they're currently ignoring and what their goals and aspirations are for the weekend. it's the one thing i can think of which out-ranks Selection Criteria writing in terms of pure self-serving self-indulgence.

and it's addictive. it's the safe scream into the abyss for people who are too terrified to leave the sanctity of their troglodytic minds and realise their own insignificance. it's easy - you can do it from your bedroom, your office, your fucking car when you're stopped at the lights if you can comprehend it. it's for people who don't realise that the rest of the world cares as little for them as they do for the lad serving their dinner who studied for his Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Bangkok and now works as a barman and cook at the local chinese restaurant because no fucker will give him a better job in this country (even though his english is almost as good as theirs), not that he cares much since he earns a better wage doing that in Sydney than he would as an accountant in Thailand... but i digress. it's as accessible as typing "blogging site" into google, waving your finger blindly at the screen and picking whatever it lands on. you can set one up in under 5 minutes and get stuck straight into what a whore the checkout bitch at the supermarket was who kept staring at your boyfriend's nipple piercings and I'M SO FUCKING SPECIAL BECAUSE MARYLIN MANSON'S "ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR" MAKES ME FEEL THAT WAY AND ANYWAY I LOVE HIM SOO MUCK AND I WANTS TO HAVE HIS BABNIES!1!

and before you start screaming "hypocrite", i'd like to give you a travel brochure for a wonderful holiday destination called Hell. i suggest you go there. i was as bad as the rest of them, back in the day. i had a blog back before Live Journal was famous and by the time i finally lost the spark i'd written a small book's worth of words (over 260,000), freely accessible to young and old. i had a look through a few pages of what i produced a couple of months ago and i was surprised - partly because it reminded me of some of the insignificant events that occurred and how they effected me at the time, as well as how fucking horrible my prose was.

and the only reason i'm back is because a nice lady asked me to. i could have written emails and spammed them out to a mailing list, but the request was to "start a new blog" and so... well, she asked politely and i'm loathe to refuse a reasonable polite request like that. it may amuse you to know that i don't actually get any readership statistics from this site. i turned off all the options which would make my site come up on google or any google-related aggregators. i can't prevent yahoo from finding it, but i guess you can't win them all. i assume that there are people who read it because every now and then i get a comment from someone saying as much. i'm not sure whether i'd stop now that i'm started again. certainly, if i knew for sure that no one was reading i'd take it offline. i'd be able to write more freely, for a start, and not have to filter the content so that people don't get upset when i give them a serve.

that all said, i AM glad that i've been given the impetus to start writing again though. i used to enjoy it and i need the practice. i just wish it didn't make me One Of Them, that's all...

Snippets #2: on leadership...

anyone who's been paying attention would have seen aphorisms here and there about how some people are great, and some have greatness thrust upon them, but greatness isn't what i'm talking about here so put that out of your head. i just find it interesting that when you have a group of people working together on some task, great or small, that when there's no one person in the group with the assigned task of leading, someone will tend to assume the role. personally i've never REALLY sought it out, regardless of what some of my detractors may say. it's just that i get so pissed off that no one else will step up that i've got into the habit and have wound up taking the reins in one way or another again and again and again.

sometimes it's been out of boredom, othertimes frustration. over the last couple of weeks i've gone and started coordinating the guys i work with in a general attempt to stop everyone from tripping over their own feet, and a hope that i can get them working as an actual team rather than a 50/50 split of workaholics and slackers, with me sitting in the middle just trying to get through my days. it's worth noting that this is not what i signed up for here. i just wanted to sit around the office and fix things for a few months while my days trickled away and my savings account waxed quietly in the corner.

it kinda makes me wonder a little whether there's not something more to it - that i might actually be a closet control-freak and glory-hound. i wonder how much it actually matters one way or the other.

oh well. i'm having fun with it at the moment and i seem to be making some positive changes around the place. morale's on the up, and the team's working more cohesively than it was a month ago so i think i'll keep nudging things along until i get sick of the idea or i leave... the worst that can really happen is that someone gives me some actual responsibility and makes me actually attend meetings or something. now that would get awkward - i've got in the habit of putting my feet up on my desk while i'm working and that can look bad on the boardroom table...

at some point, though, i think i'm going to have to take an honest-to-gods Team Leader job so that i can crash and burn and prove once and for all that i'm not cut out for it. heaven-forbid that i somehow do WELL - if that happened i'd get completely incorrigible and there'd be no stopping me...

snippets #1 (those allergic to incoherence should turn back now...)

i'm trying to get more of these idle thoughts down - those ideas which come to you in the middle of night when sleep beckons and the concerns of the day fade into inconsequence and the quiet voices in the back of your head can briefly be heard. or maybe that's just me.

my head's been fairly quiet of late, i've been noticing. it's the quiet that you notice when you've become accustomed to the constant chatter of the office, or the hum of the airconditioning, or the vibration of the ship's engines to the point where you stop noticing it's there... until it's gone... and somehow you find that it's more disconcerting than when you got used to it in the first place. the noise has died down and i'm finding myself deafened by the harshness of the signal without the softening effects of interference. the distractions are there, like when i notice the scent wafting from my shirt which suddenly makes me desperately wish i was somewhere else (in this case, a place which is less geography and more proximity), or when i fall asleep while planning what i'll be doing tomorrow, or that kind of thing. sometimes, on the other hand, the silence is so deafening that i start to think that if i beat my head against the wall enough it'll come back.

it's at about this point that i realise that the way i'd always thought about insanity was somewhat arse-about. i'm seriously considering the idea that instead of madness being the LACK of sanity, it's the other way around and that it's taking the madness away that leaves you terrifyingly sane. i'm not sure i'm entirely happy with this. this means that something's raped my mind and ripped that comforting random psychosis from my living brain. sure, it's generally easier for me to sleep at night at the moment, but AT WHAT COST?????

hmm. i'm going to have to ponder this more... another night.