Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

19-25March2006 :: This Week

25March2006 [directLink] [weekly]
This item was changed on 02April2006

• read Delia Falconer’s The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers
• watched Scrubs, Season 2
• watched Beautiful Creatures
• watched Bringing Out The Dead
• started reading WG Sebald’s The Emigrants
• watched Arlington Road

Flora, Thrice

20March2006 [directLink] [personal]

Despite Panasonic Australia’s protestations that my NV-GS400 camera does not exist, I managed to find a manual online, and in English. So I read it yesterday, and discovered a few features that I wasn’t aware of or hadn’t understood, having not bothered to read the manual when I bought it as it only came in European languages.

There were two/three features that piqued my interest. The first (and bonus third) is for film: the camera shoots, quite capably, in 16:9 widescreen. On the little LCD and plugged into a normal TV it appears squashed, but on the computer I get true widescreen video (in theory it will automatically adjust on a widescreen-capable TV too). The bonus is that it has a ‘Pro-Cinema’ feature, which is also 16:9, with the addition of a strobe-like effect to mimic the appearance of film. (It is, however, somewhat unnecessary as I could pull the same trick in post-production, or just use the raw footage if I decided it looked bad)

The second feature is a tele-macro thing, that, when at 12X (optical) zoom, focusses only on the immediate subject instead of trying to capture everything. I’d been able to get the same effect using the manual focus, but hitting a button is far easier, and actually works. This afternoon I grabbed a couple rough shots from around the garden at the new place. It looks rather nice, and is remarkably sharp given I shot it without a tripod (in the first case, I was standing and holding it, and feared it would come out all blurry).

Why I Do This; Some Justifications

18March2006 [directLink] [personal]

This thing I do, I do it for me. I write for me. I am conscious that I am putting this out into the void, but not conscious of a particular audience. I know that family and friends can read this, and it may keep them up-to-date with what I’m doing and thinking, but I also know that most of them don’t. I know that when they do, much of what I’ve written is just confusing. And I don’t know if they know, but this site isn’t actually the best way to keep up. I write this as a journal, but it is deliberately not private. I’ve tried keeping a private journal in the past, and I’ve never been able to do it. Here, I just write. It is a way for me to keep writing, and to get some thoughts out.

What I write here is neither fact nor fiction.

I don’t have comments here. I may do so one day, but I would probably do it on a different site. This site isn’t supposed to be a part of the conversation. Sending me an email isn’t really much harder than filling out a comments form. I may even make it easier.

Very occasionally, I write something and don’t go through with it. But I usually do. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. I keep a few text files on my laptop where I draft things, and keep a ‘blog this’ list. But then, this isn’t a blog, which is why things don’t make it online. This is a journal, a notepad.

Everything I write, everywhere, is neither fact nor fiction.

12-18March2006 :: This Week

18March2006 [directLink] [weekly]
This item was changed on 02April2006

• read ‘Chance’ from Alice Munro’s collection of short stories Runaway; very short-film-ic
• watched Syriana
• watched Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress; beautiful, emotional, intelligent yet simple, heartwarming
• read Barthes’ essay Reflections on a Manual
• read Martin Harrison’s essay What Can Poets Teach?, from a book of essays on Australia’s cultural future
• watched The Constant Gardener; awful movie, a whole lot of ‘exotic Africa’ and absolutely nothing going for it
• watched Pride & Prejudice; haven’t read the book nor seen previous adaptations, but thought this one played well and was well acted; Matthew Macfadyen is a great actor, he played a great Darcy
• watched Les Invasions Barbares; interesting generational things in there as friends gather to farewell a dying socialist. I rented it from Blockbuster where the subtitles aren’t properly encoded, meaning I couldn’t turn them off and just listen to the French; they aren’t particularly good translations either; must remember not to hire foreign movies from Blockbuster in future.

We've Been Underestimating Those Buildings

15March2006 [directLink] [personal]

On the bus on the way out of the city today I saw “the city’s most envious office building”. I had no idea buildings could do that sort of emotion, but I’ve obviously been underestimating them.

Didn’t get a photo… The building is on Clarence St just before the Bridge entrance.

Syriana

13March2006 [directLink] [movies]

From the movie’s opening scene, I knew this one was gonna be good. Beautiful camera work. Not far in and I was getting that spy-movie-thrill that I haven’t had in a long time. Was sitting there thinking this is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Then about halfway through I suddenly realised the movie wasn’t set when I thought it was and lost all the immersion. That was pretty jarring, and I wasn’t able to get back into the film like I had been, but was still excellent enough that I could still say it was one of the best once it finished.

But that time-framing issue was really annoying. From all the talk before seeing the film, I wasn’t entirely sure when the film was set, but was absolutely certain it was pre-911. The only event referred to that could’ve framed it was mention that the main character was in Beirut in 1985. I had assumed that the film was set either in the late-80s or early-90s (though sans war in the Gulf), or that it spanned that same period of time. I don’t know why, but I believed it was entirely set pre-911, pre-Bush, pre-Gulf War II. Perhaps I was influenced by the mythos too, equating the film with stories like Spy Game — the old/Cold War spy pulled out and unable to adapt to the modern world. The mid-east context is slightly different, but I assumed that, just as the spy game in Europe changed with the end of the Cold War, that the game had changed in the mid-east since the late 90s.

Now, when viewing a film about which one knows nothing, one should assume it is set in the ‘present’ (ie, this world) unless told otherwise, which is probably why the film didn’t make it obvious that it was set in the present. But still, it took me nearly half the movie to get a time reference. I kind of laughed when hearing them talk of their optimism for Iran, and similarly when Matt Damon’s character mentioned the Bin Ladens having fitted out Mecca with air conditioning; I assumed the references were for the audience only, those ones where we know something extra thanks to the benefit of hindsight. I did see what looked like an LCD television sitting in the kitchen of Jeffrey Wright’s character, thought, that looks a little high-tech, maybe it’s the mid-to-late 90s, but it can’t be LCD. But it wasn’t till around halfway through that someone referred to 9-1-1 and I had to rethink everything. Totally ruined the immersion, and I sat there for a while trying to reframe all the earlier political references in a contemporary context, and wondering what else was weird about the story-telling.

The fact that I could be so wrong about the time period points to a few interesting things though. First, mid-east politics can’t have changed a lot in the last 15-20 years. Second, it’s a pretty huge change that a movie can now be made set in a contemporary conflict-zone, using myths (ie, the spy game) that are usually reserved for hindsight. And third, for all its engaging with contemporary issues, was Syriana set in a bubble? There were absolutely no references to Iraq (I don’t even recall the name being mentioned!) nor to Bush. The movie made no claims to historicity, but I still feel that fictional movies, particularly when they’re set in the real world physically, should also be set temporally, and this movie would have worked perfectly if set in the 90s.

Even with the time-setting problem, this is an amazing movie. It looks absolutely beautiful, it’s brilliantly acted, and it’s a masterpiece of intelligent storytelling. It makes me want to rewatch it knowing that it’s supposed to be set in the present, and I’ll be curious to watch it again looking for signs of that bubble. It does deal with important issues, the politics of oil, of Islam, of democracy and reform in the Middle East. But if it is set in a bubble, I suspect it only pretends to deal with the real world.

5-11March2006 :: This Week

11March2006 [directLink] [weekly]
This item was changed on 02April2006

This is a replacement for the ‘?currently’ entries. And for listing movies I saw, books I read, &c, when I have very little to say.

• watched In Her Shoes; kinda funny but Cameron Diaz is that annoying girl
• listening to John Legend’s Get Lifted (again); drop the song with Kanye West and it becomes listen-able once more
• playing Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind; revisited in anticipation of ESIV: Oblivion, good to get some of that introductory thrill back
• read Jose Luis Borges’ Utopia Of A Tired Man
• watched Equilibrium; nothing new story-wise but entertaining scifi
• watched Blood: The Last Vampire; rather strange and too-short, but beautiful visuals combining hand-drawn and CG animation

Style Updates

07March2006 [directLink] [personal]

As promised, I’ve made some changes to the styles on this site. There are three alternate stylesheets available: the black and white ‘fountain’, the stormy ‘arundell’, and the mysterious ‘henge’. Over on the right is a little box headed ‘?style’, where you can click on a thumbnail to load an alternate style (it’ll take a few seconds as it fetches the file and the new header image, and the browser renders the page again). I’ve tested the function with Konqueror, Firefox and IE6, so it should work for most people (though it needs javascript). Some notes on functionality:

• The arundell and henge sheets use PNG transparency for the header image, which isn’t properly supported in IE6… Load them if you want, but they won’t display properly. If you want to see henge in all its glory, download Firefox
• In a concession to users of IE6, the fully compatible fountain stylesheet is set as the default.
• Assuming javascript and cookies are enabled, the stylesheet you select will be remembered during your visit to the site. At the moment it’s setup to forget the setting after an hour, so if you come back later you’ll get the default style again… I’m going to change this but it requires some work and testing so that one always gets an available stylesheet (in case I remove one later)

I currently have henge set in my browser, as it looks spectacular…

Finally, this feature allows for more than just switching colours and a header image… It’s going to take some work, but I should be able to modify the layout entirely, eg, to switch from two-column to three-column layout, or to hide certain navigation options, &c…

Attempting Reconnection… Failed

06March2006 [directLink] [personal]

Abort, Retry, Fail?_ R

After returning from the year of In-Country Studies, one hits a 7-8 day mark when reality sets in, and with it, a sense of loss… It’s happened to all the ICS students I’ve spoken to; suddenly one realises that this isn’t another holiday, and one really is back in Australia, back at home, back at uni or some sort of real life. That wonderful year and that wonderful proximity is over, gone… Since then I’ve been feeling remarkably disconnected.

But it gets worse… The family has moved house, and I’ve just hit the 7-8 day mark… So now I’ve got to put up with that bizarre sense of loss all over again, and it still makes no sense.

I’ve been trying to distract myself lately in an attempt to reconnect with the world. As you can tell from this site — I finally post again, and this is my third for the day. Plus a redesign, and there’s more coming. I’ve got this castle one up, the old versailles fountain shot is still around (but hidden for now) and there’s an awesome looking stonehenge stitch-up I’m working on. I’m going to add a style-switcher too, and try get it working in both IE and modern browsers. (Anyone using IE at the moment is missing the transparent image behind the intro box up top, making it rather difficult to read, and the Stonehenge header uses lots of transparency, thus looking absolutely awful in IE).

White vs Beige, Round 4

06March2006 [directLink] [wishlist]
This item was changed on 06March2006

On Switching

Put the White vs Beige fight on hiatus, it having become somewhat academic as I have no money, nor any immediate signs of paid work. But I came across an interesting article on switching over at Daring Fireball (Familiarity Breeds a User Base 5March2006). John Gruber is one of those rare Mac users (and writers) who is actually somewhat rational about Apple’s product. He has some interesting things to say.

I don’t think there’s any easy way for Apple to overcome this familiarity factor, and I think it’s the single biggest impediment to would-be-switchers. However, I do think this — those who are aware of the Mac and suspect it might be a better choice, but who are reluctant to try because they’re so familiar with Windows — is one group of people who are perhaps likely to switch because of the so-called “iPod halo effect”. Through their iPods, they become familiar with Apple hardware and software (iTunes), and, in many cases, familiar with Apple retail stores. I think in some cases they just need to see existence proof that Apple kit isn’t “weird”.

OK, so we’ve kinda always known this, but sometimes it’s good to have the obvious pointed out…

This too is a succinct summary of a commonly-held knock against the Mac: that because the Mac is controlled by Apple, that switching to it is risky because it puts your computing future in the hands of just one company. I.e. that PCs are open and Macs are closed, and open is somehow safer.

But while PC hardware in and of itself constitutes an ostensibly open platform, somewhere around 90-95 percent of all PCs sold are, in fact, Windows PCs. And while, yes, Apple controls the entirety of each Macintosh, both software and hardware, Microsoft controls Windows every bit as much as Apple does Mac OS X.

This however, I don’t really agree with… It’s true that Microsoft controls Windows just as much as Apple controls OS X. But the difference is in the hardware: some of it is only perception, but Apple controls the box in ways Microsoft simply cannot. That isn’t to say that one’s computing future is in Apple’s hands, but well, if I want to upgrade my beige box, I can go to any computer store and pick up a new component. If I want to upgrade a white box, in many cases I have to do so through Apple. …And worse, oft-times I would have to buy a completely new box.

I’ll admit, however, that this is a huge generalisation, and has changed somewhat in recent years. I recently tried upgrading our Dell box and found that screwless entry was rather limited, opting for a firewire card and external drives instead. And it was our fault when we made the original purchase, but there’s no AGP slot, so I can’t stick a video card in there… And while the iMac is something of a closed box, the PowerMacs are more open, at least coming with available PCI slots and room for an extra hard drive.

The perception is there though, and I don’t expect Apple to change it. What I’ve realised is that people coming from a Wintel background expect that they will, at some stage, need to open the box up and tinker, because they’re used to boxes wearing out for no apparent reason… But I get the impression that Apple’s control over the hardware is actually a Good Thing, with the result that one doesn’t actually need to tinker anywhere near as often…

So I’m still aiming towards White; I’ll just keep an old beige box around (running Linux of course) for when I feel like tinkering…

Oh and with the release of the new Intel-based iMacs, I’m very tempted to get a 17” iMac — configured with 2GB of RAM it’s of similar power to the old G5 PowerMacs, at half the price… (Thanks to an Educational discount of course) That closed-box-ness is annoying, but it’s far more affordable, and should be capable of the video tasks I want to throw at it. I’ve just gotta wait and see how long it takes to get Final Cut Pro converted to a native Intel app, and see how performance compares… In the meantime, I can try find some sort of paid work. Edit: I said 21”, it’s the 17” that was half the price, not the 20”

Crash, House of Flying Daggers, Little Fish

06March2006 [directLink] [movies]

I saw these movies a few weeks ago, when I hired about a dozen in the space of a couple weeks, catching up for the year overseas. I’d only managed to write a sentence on each though, so I’m lumping them all together here.

• Crash :: (Then:) A fascinating exploration of racism and human nature. Best of all, the film has no answers, and makes no clear judgements — all the characters have shades of grey. (Now:) Crash just won the Best Picture Oscar, thus lumping it in with movies I must not like (‘cause hey, that’s worked for me so far…). And well, I’ve been able to think about it more… I still think it was well-acted, and I enjoyed the ambiguity. People have reacted very differently to the depiction of racism though. My basic thought is that people are in denial if they think that this kind of racism doesn’t exist anymore, and well, it’s a movie, it deliberately sets up coincidences, brings that suppressed racism to the surface. However, some of my uneasiness has been expressed (though my own thoughts aren’t as strong) by Matt Zoller Seitz (The House Next Door :: Anything But This 27Feb2006):

In the name of Big Drama, it ignores the chilling effect of political correctness, which compels everyone who’s not a fringe-dwelling hatemonger or a person pushed to the edge of his or her rope to express racist thoughts in code.

…

Ignoring this psychological given, “Crash” is set in Archie Bunker World, a nostalgic land where race is at the forefront of every consciousness during every minute of every day, where elaborately worded slurs are loaded into everyone’s speech centers like bullets in a gun, ready to be fired at the instant that disrespect is given. The characters are anachronistic cartoons posing as symbols of contemporary distress. They seem to have time-warped in from the Nixon era, when the country’s pop culture purveyors decided to roll up their sleeves and get all this race stuff out in the open and show we were all secure enough to call each other bad names and then laugh about it and move on. That was a nervous, belligerent response, an overcompensation that came from sitting on this stuff for hundreds of years and seeing it explode into riots and shootouts. But the contrived frankness served a valuable function at the time; it was a little taste of the poisons lurking beneath the American façade, a rhetorical inoculation designed to toughen up the body politic. And it’s over now. We’re still a racist country, but we’re a hell of a lot more sophisticated about it, and the inability or unwillingess of “Crash” to admit this makes it both stupid and pernicious.

Racism expresses itself more subtly and insidiously now than it did in Archie Bunker’s day. Neither the public nor the private language are the same; political correctness constrains people of Boomer age or older, while the younger generations are likely to view the multicultural future not with dread, or even idealism, but simply as a given.

• House of Flying Daggers :: A beautiful film. The story, for all its plot twists, was relatively simple. It was really a love story (you don’t find out what happens to the Flying Daggers, and it doesn’t even matter), handled with a very light touch. But key to the film is the look. The costumes and sets, the cinematography, the visual effects, the choreographed fight scenes, all beautiful.
• Little Fish :: (Then:) All star Australian cast, amazing look at life, struggle, drugs. (Now:) Still don’t have a lot to add, just that it was a brilliant re-introduction to the Aussie film scene for me… Gives me hope returning to a film-making final year (full-time anyway) at uni.