karlpeter3’s project blog

Fahrenheit 9/11 & Yurp Again

2004-06-25T11:02:00.000+08:00

Another great Guardian cartoon on the monkey president and a piece there on Michael Moore’s latest.

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11

2004-06-24T22:46:00.000+08:00

Fahrenheit 9/11 has been reviewed by the highly esteemed New Yorker magazine here.

Yet Another Non-Internet Exploder Web Browser

2004-06-24T22:31:00.000+08:00

There are many good reasons to avoid using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (aka Internet Exploder) web browser.

The Windows versions of Exploder are terrible and hardly completely web standards compliant. The Mac versions are better but still have their problems including the fact they just seem to be dead slow compared to Apple’s own Safari web browser as well as the many Gecko-based web browsers out there like Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape Navigator and Camino.

I have been using Firefox for a while as it displays Blogger.com’s forms-based weblog editing functionality correctly whereas Safari currently does not. But Firefox is coded in Apple’s Carbon programming framework whereas Camino is coded in Cocoa. Cocoa is better in my opinion—faster, Mac OS X native, and comes with a better GUI. Neater and more efficient.

But the one count against the current beta version of Camino, version 0.8, is that it refuses to display the Title form field in Blogger.com. So I have to jump back into Firefox to make this weblog post.

Otherwise Camino has now replaced Firefox and Safari as my web browser of choice. Change and competition—wonderful things. Exploder was left in the dust long ago.

Donnie Darko Director’s Cut

2004-06-24T11:05:00.000+08:00

Donnie Darko, one of the best independent feature films for some years, made on a shoestring by a recent film school graduate, picked up by Drew Barrymore’s production company, given a very limited release in cinemas worldwide, did amazingly well in DVD sales and rental everywhere, is about to come out in a Director’s Cut version.

Here is its trailer, at Apple’s Quicktime trailers website.

The Digital Camera Thing

2004-06-24T10:18:00.000+08:00

I would so love a digital camera right now. I don’t have the income to support shooting the amount of film each week that I would like, and digital cameras have become so good that digital is certainly a solution now.

But there are digital cameras and digital cameras. I have tried quite a few of them, and have spent months working through reams of information, reviews, opinions and sample images, and my conclusion is that despite some of the other manufacturer’s individual offerings looking pretty good, best to stick with either of the big two—Nikon or Canon.

By the way, I am not considering medium format or larger digital backs or magazines—just 35mm-style cameras or smaller.

And I have ruled Leica out for the time being. The only two film cameras I have right now are two Leica M4-P rangefinder cameras with 5 lenses, only two of which I really use a great deal nowadays. I love Leicas beyond belief. But the company’s current Digilux 2 is not up to scratch. Leica’s upcoming M-series digital camera that will accept their excellent M-series lenses may be the best choice there, but we will not know that until it appears in a year or two.

I have used Canon’s 35mm film single-lens-reflex cameras over the years and love the lenses although I feel that the camera bodies are too chunky and ungainly, requiring you to conform to them rather than being designed to work best for you. The internals of Canon’s top-end digital cameras look pretty damned good though.

By contrast I was less than impressed by Canon’s low-end Digital Rebel digital SLR or the lens that comes with it.

Nikon’s entry level DSLR—awful acronym, but it means Digital Single Lens Reflex—the D70 is excellent. Definitely the one to get.

And that is despite my one reservation about it, that its digital chip is mid-sized rather than the largest size. I won’t go into all the complexities of chip size, save this one thing, that there are 3 different DSLR chip sizes—small, medium and large (the same size as a 35mm film frame)—and your best choice for quality is large. But if cameras with large chips are too expensive then choose a medium chip camera. Avoid the small chip cameras such as the plethora of non-DSLRs available now. You’ll be disappointed. Especially if you are accustomed to high-end 35mm film cameras.

Large chip cameras include the top-end Nikons and Canons. The Nikon D70 is a medium chip camera.

You’ll be hard-pressed to actually find a D70 in a Perth store. The camera and lens kits are so popular all over the world that demand has far outstripped supply. As soon as one appears in a store here it is snapped up the same day. I was lucky enough to try one out for a few minutes before it was sold. I would have bought it myself if I had the cash on me.

Here is a review of the Nikon D70 by Chick Harrity of The Digital Journalist web magazine.

The Nikon D70 is a pretty amazing little camera. For a relatively small price you get a whole lot of picture-taking ability. When the D70 was first announced it was touted as an entry level Digital SLR to rival the Canon Digital Rebel. What it turns out to be is a very capable camera that can fit into any Pro shooter’s bag as a second body to either the D2H or the D1X or it can be the basis for starting a serious move into digital.

Macs & Supercomputers

2004-06-23T10:46:00.000+08:00

The MacCentral website reports in Apple makes supercomputing news, that:

Virginia Tech’s System X may have not made it onto the latest Top 500 supercomputer rankings because of maintenance, but Apple announced Monday that the U.S. Army is deploying MACH 5, a supercomputing cluster of 1566 Xserve G5 systems that it anticipates will be faster than System X—and if projections hold true, faster than all but one supercomputer in the world.

System X was listed as the third fastest supercomputer in the world in the previous Top 500 list, and it was made out of a mass of Apple G5 tower computers wired up together. System X is currently out of action as it is being rebuilt out of G5 Xserve server computers instead of the G5 desktop boxes its first generation was made out of.

The full story is here. And here is another quote:

The supercomputer, named MACH 5, is expected to deliver peak performance capability of more than 25 TFlops/second. In comparison, the Virginia Tech supercomputer announced last year attained sustained performance of approximately 10 TFlops/second, according to Apple director of product management, server hardware, Alex Grossman.

With those numbers, the MACH 5 would rank second only to Japan’s $350 million Earth Simulator computer.

The Army’s supercomputer costs US$5.8 million, a pittance compared to the costs of the Japanese supercomputer. Nice to know that the machine one uses to edit films can also do this, in concert with a few more of the same.

Diets & Fitness

2004-06-22T16:03:00.000+08:00

I discussed diets online with a friend from Denmark—the country, not the town in the country—last night and he recommends the Atkins Diet. He is on it right now and has lost quite a bit. I will look into it.

This obesity thing is really coming to the fore in the press and the radio. And in real life. I was on the train yesterday and opposite me sat a woman so fat, her face and neck and upper body so stuffed with fat that appeared be bursting outwards from her skeleton, that she could not actually open her mouth to speak but formed word shapes by moving her lips in and out in a very peculiar manner.

Picture a face something like how Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body was once described, as a bag filled to bursting with beach balls.

The question is, though, how does she ingest all that food without opening her mouth wide? Liquidize it first, and then suck it up with a straw? She was not eating on the train—eating onboard is not permitted—but the bags she was carrying were packed full of sweets and junk food.

Where Would We Be Without Terence Conran?

2004-06-22T15:32:00.000+08:00

I rarely buy anything at full price and for books I scour the two remainder bookstores as well as sales at the regular ones. I came across Terence Conran’s Alcazar to Zinc: The Story of Conran Restaurants the other day. I bought it and it has joined his Design and the Quality of Life on my design bookshelves.

Conran’s influence is so very important to the way creativity and design have so permeated British culture, or at least London culture. I wish it had filtered through to Australia and especially Perth though. We are enamoured of the secondhand and the second rate over here, accepting all substitutes quite gladly.

We read Wallpaper and Surface magazines and look at the little images of the nice stuff you can buy from the big shops in the east, but we have never seen the real thing and when we go into a store in Perth we are perfectly happy to buy overpriced crude and nasty knock-offs of the real thing. There is a store in Osborne Park that specializes in really, really shoddy knock-offs of design classics priced at half to two-thirds the price of the real thing in the east.

We have no Space or similar stores here, just knock-off joints. And the biggest difference between buying knock-offs and the real thing is this—when you get bored by the real thing you can take it to an antiques store and resell it at a premium. The knock-off can only go on to the trash heap.

I was reflecting on why all this yesterday, during a semi day off when I rode the rails through the affluent middle class Anglo suburbs of Perth ending up in Fremantle, stopping off to stroll the streets of each major stop. I especially reflected on that book review in The Weekend Australian, about this being the second most English nation in the world, and all the English immigrants being suburbanites and not sophisticated urban-dwellers.

Perth is the most English city of them all, and they are not former Londoners. They are suburbanites from provincial towns and cities in England. Best to think of Perth as a kind of Brighton down under, but with no capital that you can travel to and see the sights and gain firsthand understanding in.

New Film Treatments

2004-06-22T15:23:00.000+08:00

I am now working on a treatment for a 4-part documentary series, each episode 30 minutes long, total budget set to AU$240,000, for a submission due early next month.

My working title is Visionaries of the Western Edge. I have one subject so far, have one possible I am seeking confirmation on, and two more to choose and line up.

Then I have to see what Daniela Federici in New York is up to so I can work on one with her, that she might direct.

Health & Endurance

2004-06-22T15:09:00.000+08:00

Philip Blenkinsop, the subject of my current documentary film treatment, is legendary for his ability to trek hundreds of miles throught the Asian jungles. It must take a hell of a lot of stamina to do that. My thoughts keep turning to how on earth I can possibly keep up. If we get funding then I will have to take up some kind of training. Thus my attention to the state of bodily things. Like why do I get these masses of little red sores that break out on my legs every so often? A whole lot of them have just appeared. I keep thinking that I should go out and buy a whole heap of vitamins and other health supplements to take—my diet is not exactly balanced right now, given I live alone and have not been paying enough attention to myself—but it would cost me a fortune as I would want to go and buy up EVERYTHING!

If You See It, Grab It. Again & Again.

2004-06-22T10:05:00.000+08:00

Years of living in Perth on and off have taught me at least one thing—if you are lucky enough to stumble across something good then grab it immediately. Regardless of whether you can really afford it or not, because you will never see it again. That applies to everything from foodstuffs and other consumables to clothes and shoes and, well, you name it. The temporary pain of doing without other things for it is well worth it in the end.

The next rule is that if it is something that will wear out, then grab lots and lots of it. As much as you can possibly afford. Do without lunch for a week or a month if you have to.

It is terrific when something even better comes along though. I do A LOT of long distance walking, especially when it is sunny bright and I have the Leica in the backpack, and the choice of clothes and boots I wear for the purpose has become a real and vital issue. Choose poorly and you really suffer for it.

Not least or last comes underwear. Too bulky, too bad at wicking moisture away, poorly structured for the human body, and you get abrasion and extreme discomfort, even pain. So for a short time I hunted down the best underwear I could find for the job—Elle MacPherson’s Virtual. Then the product line suddenly vanished never to return. I had managed to obtain just enough for a week’s turnaround but really needed more. I am always very conscious, from the days of not having my own washing machine and from the travelling years, that you should have enough to get you by without being able to wash for a while.

And the other day I happened across a new and better range, one that has a better shape and far better fabric, one of these fancy new age moisture-wicking synthetics. Do not assume that natural fibres are always better than man-made ones. That is an old and bankrupt notion now. High tech synthetics can be designed to work far better than natural products when done right.

The underwear? Made by Oroton, in the latest high-tech fibres. It has withstood many, many kilometres far better than Elle’s Virtual. So I have been buying up as many pairs as I can find, even though I cannot really afford it right now, and am still looking for more. I suspect that this stuff will last for years and years, far longer than the long period when I could not get any more Virtual and long beyond when the Oroton products vanish in their turn too.

The Welcome Rain

2004-06-22T10:00:00.000+08:00

Perth has long had a water shortage problem, especially over the summer months when the dams are low. So this current heavy rain is very welcome, even though it does remind one of the the fact that the city and its infrastructure were not designed to take moisture into account. The car park that one must walk though to get in and out of these blocks of flats is flooded and so is the street outside. Drains? What drains? But I am glad to see it raining right now.

A Most Remarkable Place

2004-06-22T09:50:00.000+08:00

Densely-packed Clerkenwell is an intriguing part of London that offers many rewards to poking about in its little lanes and alleyways. It has had a very remarkable history.

Here is an excellent article about it in The Guardian.

Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov edited and printed issues 22 to 38 of Iskra (The Spark) from a tiny office at 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1, a building that looks, from a distance, like a Georgian doll’s house. Since 1933, this has been the Marx Memorial Library, the radical heart of old Clerkenwell, a once fiercely working-class and now modish middle-class quarter of central London, peppered with creative folk from jewellers and fashion designers to architects. It was from here, a village green, that rebellions, riots and even the political volcano of the Bolshevik revolution have rumbled and exploded.

Yet Another Great Steve Bell

2004-06-22T09:09:00.000+08:00

One of my favourite political cartoonists is Steve Bell of The Guardian newspaper, and he is right on the mark yet again with Presiden’ George Bubba Dubya Boo’sh—“Squeal lak’ a pigguh, br’er Jeb!“—in this one on the presiden’s truth-tellin’ prah’blum.

Bell’s Guardian colleague Martin Rowson is also an excellent cartoonist. Here is his archives page. And here is Bell’s.

Back To The 1970s

2004-06-22T08:36:00.000+08:00

This item was also in the same IPA newsletter. Scary. Hard to imagine living and working like that now.

Once upon a time in a land not too far away from where we are right now, there was a strange world without things like computers, mobile phones, the Internet or, even, motorcycle couriers. Instead of bluetooth keyboards there were heavy steel machines called typewriters. Old men in brown, ink-stained overalls were yet to be replaced by Xerox photocopiers, and the only way to get money from your bank account was to stand in a queue and write out a cheque—ATMs were not even a twinkle in someone’s eyes.

ITV producers are bringing that scary world back to life in The 1970s Office.They’ll do this by meticulously recreating the 1970s in a suburban office and recruiting advertising creatives to work in it. Their advertising agency will be profiled which of course is great exposure for them, putting forward 3 to 4 creatives who will be effectively representing their company. These creatives will be asked to pitch for Raleigh of Nottingham’s “Raleigh Chopper” Christmas ad campaign, potentially worth a million pounds in sales. For two weeks, they will live and work without any of the trappings of the 21st century—luxuries that most of them probably don’t even realise they take for granted.

They will have just ten days to complete the Chopper pitch—then travel to Raleigh headquarters to present it to the board. But there is much, much more to The 1970s Office than the Raleigh Chopper ad campaign. Sure, the team is going to struggle without e-mail, photocopiers and faxes, but what will be even more interesting is how they will work to 1970s social rules and office norms. Think over-sized desks, large swivel chairs and stark, unforgiving fluorescent lighting. Rotary-dial telephones, world without e-mail, fax or even couriers?

Creativity Builds A Strong Economy

2004-06-22T08:25:00.000+08:00

This statement is at the top of the latest edition of the IPA newsletter:

One in four people in London now works in the creative industries and its stimulating effect is being felt all over the city in what’s being produced in architecture, design and advertising, film and television as well as performing and visual arts, music and video.

Pity that creativity is still seen as a dirty word in this culture. Something that discredited 1980s entrepreneurs got up to exercising upon their corporate accounts. Not only does it make life more interesting—yet another dirty word in Western Australian culture and if you hear it from a client then it is a sure sign you have failed to satisfy them—but it helps create a booming economy with a global clientele.

Worth A Look: The OMM Top 100

2004-06-20T21:38:00.000+08:00

I always have reservations about Top Ten, Top One Hundred or Top Thousand lists, but the Observer Music Montly’s The 100 Greatest British Albums list is well worth a look to remind yourself of what else is out there yet to be explored.

The Stone Roses is on the hi-fi system right now, and PiL is poised to play next.

Every So Often The Australian Is A Goodie

2004-06-20T13:17:00.000+08:00

I used to work for Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper and especially for The Weekend Australian Saturday edition with its The Weekend Australian Magazine colour supplement.

Both the regular and Saturday editions would vary in the quality and quantity of interesting content back then and they still do now. When living in London I’d buy several quality newspapers Saturday and Sunday and be deluged with fine reading. I miss that.

But every so often The Weekend Australian acquires just enough of a balance between quality and quantity to become interesting. Yesterday’s was a case in point. The editor of the Review section had bought in from the Times Literary Supplement an article by Clive James—The Dirty Truth: Why The Sopranos Leaves The Godfather For Dead.

Excellent article—very insightful comparison of David Chase’s fine HBO TV drama to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy.

Then it is followed by a page of some locally-written book reviews and two are also goodies—Like England with Sunshine and By George What A Conscience.

The first one is a review about The English in Australia by James Jupp, published by Cambridge University Press. The second is a review of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America.

Like England With Sunshine reveals, or rather the book it is about reveals, that “Australia is the second most English country in the world” and that “With almost mathematical precision, the English-born proportion rises with distance from the city centre until it reaches the rural outskirts. They come from the suburbs to live in the suburbs.” That explains a great deal.

And By George What A Conscience tells us that George Washington was unique in setting his slaves free after the War of Independence, so many enslaved black Americans having fought side by side with him in the Continental Army. He alone seemed to place some creedence in the lines of the American Constitution that all men are men are created equal.

I Discover The Body Shop’s Achilles Heel

2004-06-20T09:57:00.000+08:00

For some time I have been looking for a long-handled back scrubbing brush so I can properly clean my back in the shower. This being Perth, I have not been able to find one anywhere. Freedom of choice—there is not a great deal of it in this city. If you cannot get it, you do without or order it in from overseas or put up with an inferior version if you can get it.

Then last week when I remembered I had bought a back scrubbing brush from The Body Shop in London.

So I bought the only kind they had in the Perth CBD store, used it the next morning, and hung it up on a hook to dry.

Lo and behold, shortly afterwards I examined it and discovered the flat part of the wooden handle where the bristles are inserted had cracked. Really cracked. And the thing has badly warped as well.

Took it back to the store yesterday. Asked them to replace it or offer a refund. They refused the refund on the basis that I did not have my receipt with me. Well, which other shop am I going to buy a Body Shop brush prominently stamped with The Body Shop logo on it? I don’t keep every damned receipt under the sun—this little flat would be littered with the things.

They told me that the maker of the brush had informed them after the date when I had bought it that the brush was not to be used wet. So The Body Shop now cannot guarantee it if you choose to use it for the purpose it was supposedly designed for. Only dry. Right. Who the hell is not going to use a backscrubbing brush wet? So you are going to scrub your back dry and soapless and never actually wash the damned thing?

I could only get a replacement with another equally defective brush, which I used the next morning and it duly cracked as well.

Good one Body Shop. That brush cost $17.50.

Body Shop founder Anita Roddick is on my list of possible interview subjects for the film as she is also a women’s and human rights activist.

Taking a Leaf from the Coppola Book

2004-06-20T09:44:00.000+08:00

My theory about learning filmmaking is this—having been duly impressed by Sofia Coppola’s writing and directing debut in The Virgin Suicides and her latest film Lost In Translation—that total immersion in film might just be a good way of doing it. Because surely she was completely immersed in film and filmmaking by virtue of being in that family.

So that is why I rent so many movies a week now. Besides, right now the TV is pretty bad here!

I am off to the video store again in a few minutes, to pick up and return. I might pick up The French Connection and The French Connection II as well as Lonesome Dove. Not necessarily the kind of films I love best but I believe there is something to learn from films in many different genres, especially if they are recognized classics and if so many people love them.

Remarkable fact about Lonesome Dove. Many people consider it the greatest western ever made. Even though it was made for American TV as a mini-series. Yet it largely possesses an Australian vision and sensibility. It was directed by the Australian Simon Wincer and the Australian Dean Semler was its director of photography and second unit director.

The Opposite of Delusion

2004-06-20T09:38:00.000+08:00

In the UK I worked with a famous graphic and mutimedia designer who maintained his practice via a company of 30 people while also holding a position as a professor at the Royal College of Art—RCA. He was often featured as a guest speaker at worldwide industry conferences, and was so respected that he received all kinds of awards from the government and—urrghh, shudder—royalty.

No system of education is perfect and most are far from it, but at least the colleges that I knew of in Britain were in the habit of inviting working professionals into their holy grounds to present, tutor, sit on boards and assess examinations. and even to become part-time professors.

The Delusion of Education

2004-06-20T08:36:00.000+08:00

I was reading one of the many excellent articles on great photographers that are published at about.com when the author, a London-based teacher of photography, offered the opinion that, although he has made a decades-long living teaching the subject, he believes that truly self-motivated would-be photographers are better off learning it by themselves.

He says that those who enrol in courses such as the ones he teaches lack sufficient motivation to learn it by doing it alone and they need the added impetus of being with other people or of a teacher setting assignments and demanding they complete them to schedule. He is right.

I have taught in private and state-funded schools and colleges of all kinds and have always been surprised at how lazy, how lacking in motivation, the vast majority of students are. I have been amazed at how students try to get away with doing and learning as little as possible.

If they cannot be bothered actually learning, then why are they there?

I was naïve when I was young. I lived in the country—rural, poor, ethnic and working class—and had cultivated a fantasy that if I could get to a university in the big smoke then I would be able to study anything and everything I was remotely interested in, and that the place would be staffed by people who genuinely cared about helping me to learn. And that the libraries would be stuffed full of wonderful resources that I could never afford nor find by myself and the same for the teaching departments. A place to expand your mind into the infinite.

Boy was I wrong!

I live just slightly north of one such university, and often walk through its grounds and drop into the library, and sometimes into lectures in the larger lecture halls. I know people who teach there and people who study there. I even taught there once myself for a time. I hear stories about conditions there every so often. I have scoured the library and the bookstore. I have a reasonable idea of what goes on.

These things I know:

People are teaching subjects they have no experience in.

People are teaching subjects they have no knowledge about.

People are teaching subjects they have no interest in.

Instead of being as comprehensive and as complete as possible, the library presents a very narrow selection of books, periodicals and multimedia titles about the subjects the university teaches, thus presenting a narrow point of view.

A form of hero worship is cultivated there in certain subject areas, with students slavishly imitating the work of teachers instead of being encouraged to develop their own visions and ideas.

The Best Lebanese Pastries In All The Land

2004-06-19T09:28:00.000+08:00

Perth is hardly the centre of the western world and so a great many things that you might want to buy are impossible to obtain here, but there is one thing here that I love that is the best in all of Australia.

Lebanese pastries.

During the years I lived in my beloved East Perth and well beyond, my first wife and I would often drop in to the city’s only Lebanese café in William Street, Northbridge. They had great coffee—which led to a Lebanese coffee habit I keep supplied via my own ibrik at home now—and terrific Lebanese pastries. Not to mention excellent Mediterranean mostly vegetarian food.

But the sweets and pastries! To die for! Or to die of, if you consume them in excess. Generous sizes, sweet and juicy. Baklava, halwa, boorma postasio, canary’s nests, lady’s fingers, bookaj, and my favourite of all, bogasha. Big, warm, creamy, wet and dripping with luscious rosewater-flavoured syrup, a large white triangle of custard enveloped by leaves of flaky pastry softened by the syrup. Delicious! The luscious pleasure as its creamy moisture oozes down your chin!

Does bogasha explain my fondness for cunning linguistics? In my book the woman always comes first.

I have been to Lebanese, Turkish and Greek cafés in Sydney and the only pastries they ever had there were baklava, and they were mean, undersized, hard and next to tasteless. Whoever makes the Lebanese pastries you can buy in select locations throughout Perth is a genius.

I have discovered a place in Dog Swamp—the shopping precinct in the southern part of Yokine, which itself is Noongar for dog—that has an excellent selection of them. The rather sturdy girl behind the counter shares my predilection for bogashas, and she likes to share her opinion on how good, how tempting, they look on any given day. Especially when fresh out of the makers’ delivery van.

The only downside is the shop is located in a strip mall just off the main shopping area where almost all the food stores only open from 5PM onwards. No lunchtime trade for them. For lunch you must patronize the multinational fast food joints, and that is something I refuse to do.

Going Underworld Again

2004-06-16T11:00:00.000+08:00

The music of Underworld is back on the sound system, blasting away. Antidote to the grey outside. I must remember to get a copy of their 1992–2002 compilation CD next time I am in JB Hi-Fi.

Email Scammers: Once Nigerian, Now Dutch

2004-06-16T10:26:00.000+08:00

The flood of emails from Nigerian email scammers has abated somewhat and looks like being replaced by a Dutch-based lottery scam. Pity the scammer does not seem to know how to correctly write the name of Bill Gates’ company.

We are pleased to inform you of the announcement today, June 15th, 2004, of winners of the EURO LUCKY DE LOTTO/INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS held on 15th May 2004.

Note that All participants in this lottery program have been selected randomly through a computer ballot system drawn from over 20,000 companies and 30,000,000 individual email addresses from all search engines and web sites. This promotional program takes place every year, and is promoted and sponsored by eminent personalities like the Sultan of Brunei, Bill Gates of microsoft inc and other corporate organisations. This is to encourage the use of the internet and computers worldwide.

You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$5,000,000.00 in cash…

REMO, A Lovemark, Going Strong

2004-06-16T10:17:00.000+08:00

Another email arrived with news of a new product offering from REMO, the store that used to be located on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, but that now has become an online entity with some small physical outlets across the metropolitan area.

REMO was one of the best things about Sydney when I first moved there in the early 1990s. It had some boom years, then a long bust, and now it is back on its feet again in a very 21st century way. And REMO has long been a Lovemark at the Lovemark.com website.

It’s Lurrvve, Spelled L.O.V.E.M.A.R.K.

2004-06-16T10:02:00.000+08:00

An email from the Lovemarks.com team reports that both site and book are doing well. If you are in the advertising, design or marketing businesses then you should definitely check out the website and buy yourself a copy of the book, written by Saatchi & Saatchi’s worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts.

I did consultancy work for Saatchi & Saatchi in London just before Roberts came aboard and even then they were showing early signs of becoming something very different to the usual multinational advertising agency group.

Sometimes Silence, Sometimes Noise

2004-06-15T11:03:00.000+08:00

Most often silence helps me be most productive, but clearly today is not one of those days. The Underworld CDs are due for some heavy rotation today. Their music helps create the illusion of a vast field of infinite possibility, beyond space and time.

A Branding & Naming Exercise

2004-06-15T10:24:00.000+08:00

I don’t remember a great deal of the last few days, back into the middle of last week. Viral delerium.

But one thing that does stand out is participating in a branding and naming session for a new firm of physiotherapists. The firm is essentially 2 women who are themselves athletes, and they are physiotherapists to a number of elite athletes and teams in this state.

I am told that they do not really want to emphasise that fact, on the basis that it may put off regular members of the public on the assumption that they only treat athletes.

Athletes notoriously injure themselves regularly and badly. It takes vast expertise to keep them on their feet and constantly performing at their peak. A physiotherapist who does so is likely to be on the cutting edge of sports medicine. I don’t know about you, but I know that I’d love to be treated by someone whose expertise is cutting edge, because I know that they will bring that rare knowledge to treating me. That may not be the case for someone whose practice is more mundane.

And I have a personal preference for female doctors and health professionals. I know that women’s nature is innately caring, while men’s is not necessarily so. Just think back to the male doctors I have been treated by in the past. Brusque, seemingly uncaring, victim to an essentially nineteenth century notion of patient-practitioner relationships.

The Personal & Professional

2004-06-15T10:17:00.000+08:00

For me, there is no gap between the personal and the professional. I take it all personally. That is the nature of creative work. And that is why this blog, ostensibly a project and therefore work-oriented blog, contains so much seemingly private content.

There is also the fact that in order to come to grips with more serious writing, I must get more mundane and more personal stuff written down and thus out of my head.

Writing does not come naturally and I have to treat it as a form of therapy, an exercise, and something to be practised in whatever form is convenient on a regular basis.

The Origins Of Sleeplessness

2004-06-15T10:13:00.000+08:00

Insomnia—the one thing that stands between me and complete mental and physical health. I am only insomniac when alone. When I have someone to curl up with I sleep like a rock. It has been years.

Why Normal Is Good

2004-06-15T09:55:00.000+08:00

Without feeling normal or the next best thing to it, I cannot make the kind of unlikely connections between unrelated things that powers my best thinking and writing.

Without feeling normal I come up with pedestrian conclusions expressed in a pedestrian manner. Boring and obvious.

The weather has as much to do with it as my physical and mental health. Today is a warm and cloudlessly sunny day. A perfect Perth winter’s day. The kind I shot most of A Poverty of Desire on, and the only kind I make photographs for myself on.

Almost Back To Normal (Or The Closest Thing)

2004-06-15T09:07:00.000+08:00

Coughing reduced, dizziness way down, the ability to form coherent thoughts coming back, just the old familiar insomnia remains.

I must be returning to normal!

A Fact About Photographers’ Fees & Ownership

2004-06-14T22:56:00.000+08:00

Before his death in January of this year, the great German-Australian photographer Helmut Newton worked for an advertising day rate of US$30,000, plus costs. That day rate included usage for one territory. Each extra territory cost the same as his day rate, although he was reasonably negotiable about it. But what was unconditional was payment of a 50% advance upfront.

I’d be surprised if the average Australian advertising photographer gets much more than AU$2,500 per day plus costs.

And for that some Australian clients expect to own everything? Are they crazy? When Helmut Newton never gave it away for figures as high as his?

Australian Photographers & Their Rights

2004-06-14T22:15:00.000+08:00

A question that came up in relation to the documentary film treatment has reminded me that Australian photographers only just recently gained some of the same rights that photographers in the rest of the western world have always had—copyright and moral rights to their own photographs. In other words, the right to own their own work.

I was away at the time but I remember reading sometime in the mid-1990s that the media unions had finally won their decades-long fight against the publishers to gain some rights.

I still have arguments with Australians on the commissioning side of the equation about ownership. They believe that simply because they have paid a fee and costs then they own the photographs lock, stock and barrel until perpetuity. Copyright, moral rights, negatives, transparencies, scans and all. And they cannot even begin to get their heads around the idea of usage fees.

“That’s just plain WRONG!” I remember one particularly vigorous debater shouting, before he stalked out of the room.

I commissioned an Australian photographer to do an Adidas worldwide shoot for me in the mid-1990s, just before the copyright victory, on behalf of The Leagas Delaney Partnership advertising agency in London, and I had to convince his Sydney agent that such a thing as usage and usage fees existed and that I really did want to pay him for them across several territories. She thought I was making it all up.

We can be so childlike, so naïve, in our isolation from the world.

Hah! I Wuz Wrong!: A Dream Or A Delusion?

2004-06-14T19:37:00.000+08:00

I cannot sign off for the night without noting this one last thing. A strange and illuminating thing.

I was out late Saturday afternoon, returning some DVDs to the rental store a good few blocks south and west of here. I followed my usual route, westwards straight to the main road after which I was to go south to the swamp and the shopping centre.

Saturday is of course sabbath day and this suburb is at the very northern and western edge of the most Jewish part of Perth. The Carmel School is just to the north, the Sir David Brand homes are just to the south over the park, and the synagogue is to the southeast in the midst of a suburb of retirement villas. People walk to the synagogue from all over this area.

I saw a couple approaching from the main road, the husband pushing their baby along in a large formal black pram of the kind that English Norland nannies train with. He was of medium height, fully-bearded and wearing the complete Orthodox Jewish regalia, blankly staring ahead. The woman was on his right, away from the road, and she was tall, was dressed in black from head to toe, and was wearing a close-fitting Edwardian-looking outfit complete with a synthetic fur hat resembling an inverted bucket, again perfectly Edwardian. Her face was strangely familiar.

Perth is heavily populated with provincial English people who hold fast to the old English habit of refusing to look at other people in the street (or on the bus or train). They pass you by, eyes rigidly downcast, blankfaced or sometimes with a furious expression, as if you do not exist. Whether guilt or shame or worse, I have never been able to understand their motivation for this behaviour. Sometimes they will smack straight into you, bounce off and continue on their way. You know a non-Anglo foreigner or an ethnic immediately by the way their eyes meet yours as you pass in the street and you exchange nods and silent greetings, or say hello to one another as any decent human being might be expected to do. A local newspaper columnist commented on the same phenomenon just recently.

The man of the couple was of the English persuasion, but the woman looked me straight in the eyes and gently said “Hello, Karl.” I gently said Hello back. They continued on their way. I continued on mine. The last thing I wanted to do was stop and bestow ’flu bugs on strangers. Especially strangers with a tiny baby particularly susceptible to the ’flu virus. And they were strangers, that is certain. I do not know any Orthodox jews in this city and never have. Only the more unorthodox sort.

What was remarkable about the woman, besides her picture-perfect Edwardian clothing—no real surprise given the Orthodox and Hasidic propensity for dressing in the street clothes of a long bygone era—was her close resemblance to the British actress Gina McKee, who had appeared in Poliakoff’s The Lost Prince as the governess Lalla, and before that as Nadia in Michael Winterbottom’s excellent movie on working class London life named Wonderland, and before that as Bella in Richard Curtis’ woeful middle class London movie Notting Hill.

This is not the first time perfect strangers have greeted me in public by saying my name.

Last Perfect Post For The Night, I Swear!

2004-06-14T19:03:00.000+08:00

With all these cheap and nasty so-called reality shows dominating local TV—and most of them failing miserably to gain and hold their audiences—great and beautifully-written TV shows are a rare and merciful change.

Just now The Sopranos is on once again, Tuesdays at 10:30PM or later as usual, and I am praying for the return of The West Wing and Six Feet Under. Those three programs make switching on the box worthwhile. And the writing is astoundingly good. Astoundingly, jaw-droppingly good.

I had a pleasant surprise earlier this year when a British three-part miniseries was broadcast on Sundays, as I recall. Perfect Strangers, written by Stephen Poliakoff. I had seen his The Lost Prince and Shooting the Past before that, but Perfect Strangers is the best of the three without a doubt. Superb television that reminds you of what is actually possible in the medium, and that while Hollywood has been dumbing down the movies for over a decade now, TV has been raising the bar a little.

Anyway, when I was out last week scooping up ’flu bugs I dropped into Elizabeth’s Secondhand Bookshop by chance, could no longer find their Film section as they had rearranged the shelves, and so passed by their Plays section where I found a battered old copy of the screenplay for Perfect Strangers! I was short of cash but I forked out for it anyway, having never seen a new copy of it on any other bookshelf. What a joy! I read it from cover to cover as soon as I got home. I relived the TV broadcasts while I did so, with pleasure.

I have been looking for a DVD of Perfect Strangers ever since, in the rental stores and online at Amazon.com, but no luck so far. It is available through Amazon’s British online store, but the exchange rate is not in our favour.

Here are some reader comments from IMDB and Amazon.com:

This drama is 4+ hours long but it held us in its power throughout. It was not originally intended to be seen all in one day, of course, but is so gripping that if you have it all you’ll want to see it all. Some of Britain’s finest stage and TV talent was gathered for this—the BBC must have known they were on to a good thing when they saw the script—and that talent is deployed masterfully.

As far as TV drama goes, this is about as good as it gets. Highly recommended.

Winner of Best Actor Award for Michael Gambon at the BAFTAs, 2002.

If we ever had any doubts, Perfect Strangers confirms that Poliakoff is the best writer for TV in the UK (and the world?).

For me, the greatest achievement of the piece is that it is deeply moving without ever becoming sentimental. This is primarily because of the performances.

Perfect Strangers is a truly amazing piece which shouldn’t be missed. Perhaps what makes it so powerful is the idea that so many emotions and tales can be captured with the click of a camera.

Last Blog Post For The Night?

2004-06-14T18:57:00.000+08:00

Last blog entry for the night. I am actually still quite ill, having contracted damn near every bug and virus I could find when I went out in public for a few days last week. I have been too sick to even think straight for days now, spent all last weekend in bed raving and hacking my heart out, and today my head has been spinning most of the day and coherent thoughts have been difficult to squeeze out. Just now I had a long coughing fit that resulted in foaming at the mouth and the feeling that I was being strangled. Really! My ex-wife might enjoy that thought.

I have been using these blog posts as a way of making my brain work again, after a fashion, and it has been a struggle.

Ah, maybe just one last blog post after this one.

One Count Against Firefox

2004-06-14T18:43:00.000+08:00

There is a problem with the Mozilla Firefox web browser that I have just come across—it fails to display title text correctly. It shows the first few words and then chops the rest of it off.

Title text is the stuff that you write in XHTML, in anchor tags and others, like this:

title="Your title text goes here."

…and it shows up in well-programmed web browsers as if it was a tooltip. Excellent way of adding extra meaning and content to a web page.

Pity Firefox completely botches it up, but at least Safari and Internet Exploder get it right. Strike one against Firefox. I reported this as a bug ages ago and they still have done nothing about it.

There is some title text in some previous entries. Go to the Go To Patagonia! blog post below and hold your mouse steadily over the Rohan and Patagonia links until a tooltip pops up. It will most likely look like a yellow rectangular box containing black text.

Go To Patagonia!

2004-06-14T18:01:00.000+08:00

When I first lived in the UK it was one of the coldest winters on record, the streets covered in snow and people slipping and sliding in their thin and shiny soled shoes all over the pavements. So I went in search of warm clothing and found nothing in any of the usual stores, as it had all sold out, until I came across a store in Covent Garden named Rohan that stocked a range of what it termed technical warmwear.

Their stuff was affordable and it worked like a charm, keeping me warm and dry throughout the ensuing slushy white winter months. Rohan’s clothing had its shortcomings though, and has never been available in Australia, so in more recent years I went in search of the best technical expedition clothing that I could find, and it turned out to be Patagonia from America. Their two stores in the east coast of Australia failed due to mismanagement in the extreme, but their clothes were legendary amongst those of us in the know, and remain so. People still come up to me to ask where I get my Patagonia clothes, when they spot the very obvious and bright logo.

If this film treatment on Philip Blenkinsop gets its funding, then one of the first things I will do is order some warm and waterproof clothing from Patagonia in California. Their stuff lasts forever, literally, and is worth every cent. It is all very well designed, although the colours could stand being a bit brighter and less grey—see my list of favourite colours in an earlier blog post—and the waterproofs truly are waterproof and everything rolls up into tiny little balls that pack neatly into your backback.

No other brand of technical expeditionwear even comes close. Not even Rohan. I wear Patagonia every day, and I could stand to have plenty more of their stuff in my collection.

…And When You Do, Avoid Spellcheck!

2004-06-14T17:15:00.000+08:00

Blogger’s Spellcheck function converts my carefully typed em-dashes and en-dashes, ellipses and typographer’s quotes and real apostrophes (as opposed to footmarks) into sheer gibberish, all of its own volition.

The popularity of Eats, Shoots and Leaves indicates that I am not the only one who is a stickler for decent grammar, spelling and punctuation. I notice that the book’s author Lynn Truss has done rather well out of it financially speaking, according to a Guardian Online article on its author Lynne Truss—‘I used to feel intimidated. Not any more.’

She has licked Harry Potter to a custard. She is America’s number-one bestseller from New York to San Francisco. Despite her book’s fearsome subtitle (‘The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’), she is outselling hot-cakes in Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. And, in the age of Bush and the war on terror, her quirky little guide to commas and semi-colons has become a global hit.

The nice thing about Lynne Truss is that she still can’t quite believe it. “It’s really surreal,” she says, with the puzzled expression of a shy forest creature. “You do think that someone is having a laugh here, and I’ve been set up.”

Well, she has been set up, of course. For life.

So the lesson is to get the spelling right the first time, and avoid Spellcheck altogether. And what a nice thing for Lynne Truss—she won’t have to work again by the sound of it. It was terrific to read about her success.

Write Your Blogger Posts In Firefox

2004-06-14T17:01:00.000+08:00

I recommend that Mac users using Blogger stick to the Firefox web browser instead of the otherwise excellent Safari web browser made by Apple.

The B for Bold, I for Italic, Link, and Blockquote buttons in Blogger’s Create Posting function do not show up in Safari but they do in Firefox.

One more thing for Safari’s programmers to look into. I dislike using Microsoft Internet Exploder whether on Windows or the Mac. The Windows version of Exploder is so buggy it reminds me of a rotting corpse seething with worms. Windows Internet Exploder’s shortcomings are still the biggest reason why designing websites according to web standards can be a pain, as you have to apply weird hacks to compensate for its failure to comply to the very standards that Microsoft themselves help formulate.

Drew, How About A Website To Go With The Book?

2004-06-14T16:48:00.000+08:00

Drew, it just occurred to me that the A Poverty of Desire website will need a website to go with it. Especially since we will be designing the book before finding a publisher, and the book design and thus website will also be instrumental in helping us to find galleries to show the work.

With a website having far fewer strictures than a book you can really let yourself go in the design and make excellent use of those colours and other favourite things in the My Favourite Colours (and More) post on this blog. But let’s ensure that the website is fully web standards compliant, using XHTML and CSS2.

I’ll help you out there, with the assistance of my trusty copy of Eric Meyer’s More Eric Meyer on CSS.

Where To Get Great DVDs?

2004-06-14T16:18:00.000+08:00

Jillian Lochner asked for recommendations for some great DVDs to buy the other day. I had to reply that as our local choice in movies is as limited as it seems to be in her home town—Capetown—then my best recommendation is to order DVDs from the American Amazon.com store after having read up on some of the excellent releases of once lost classics by such companies as the following:
• Artificial Eye
• Eureka Video
• The Criterion Collection

Movie websites that I read regularly include:
• They Shoot Pictures Don’t They?—produced in Adelaide, South Australia.
• Masters of Cinema

I tend to follow movies more by virtue of their directors than any other criteria, with one exception. Any movie with Cate Blanchett in it is bound to be worth seeing, for the quality of her acting work more than anything else. I see that two of her latest films are due for local release on DVD this month or shortly after—Veronica Guerin and The Missing. Neither had good exposure in the local cinemas. She seems condemned to being an art house actress despite being the greatest actress of her generation according to some experts.

These are the directors whose work I am currently watching on DVD, when I can find it:
• David Lynch
• Federico Fellini
• Krzysztof Kieslowski

There are plenty more on my list, but these are the ones whose work is easiest to locate right now.

My Favourite Designers

2004-06-14T15:26:00.000+08:00

More on the My Favourite… theme, more for the sake of Drew Turney and his book design than anything else. No surprises in any of these I would have thought.

My Favourite Fashion Designers:
• Issey Miyake
• Gianni Versace
• Paul Smith
• Alexander McQueen
• John Galliano

My Favourite Graphic Designers:
• Vince Frost
• Tomato

My Favourite Product & Furniture Designers:
• Marc Newson
• Karim Rashid
• Philippe Starck (for some things).
• Ray & Charles Eames

My Favourite Architects:
• Frank Gehry
• Zaha Hadid
• Peter Eisenmann

My Favourite Photographers:
• Stephen Shore
• Mitch Epstein
• William Eggleston
• Huger Foote
• Lee Friedlander
• Joel Meyerowitz
• Joel Sternfeld

My Favourite Bands:
• New Order
• The Chemical Brothers
• Zero7
• Orbital
• Underworld
• The Orb
• and far too many others of similar ilk whose CDs I do not currently have yet or that I cannot think of right now.

…and that is quite enough of these My Favourite lists for the time being.

My Missing Profile

2004-06-14T15:20:00.000+08:00

I cannot work out how to create a Profile on myself—the Edit Profile button on Blogger’s Dashboard is missing. View Profile is the only button that is there.

And the downside of having your Blogger blog hosted on Blogspot is that you cannot post pictures to it, unless you pay a stiff fee or have it hosted somewhere else.

I will have to think about that.

My Favourite Colours (and More)

2004-06-14T14:52:00.000+08:00

Drew Turney, who is graciously designing the book of my A Poverty of Desire photography project, tells me he has been endeavouring to obtain some of my favourite beautifully-designed photography books so he can better understand my tastes and personality and maybe learn something from their design. No mean feat given he has to request them from interstate library collections.

Meanwhile the best I can do is tell him my favourite colours, so that he can consider whether to use them in the design.

So here they are:
• Black
• Charcoal (when used in conjunction with Black in a subtle damascene pattern).
• Electric Blue
• Acid Yellow Green
• Fuchsia (the Navy Blue of India, according to Diana Vreeland).
• Midnight Blue (especially when used in conjunction with one of the above).
• Purple

I also like these metallic colours:
• Gold
• Silver

And these fabrics:
• Damask (also known as Jacquard I believe, but anything that is the one colour woven in a pattern that catches the light and shimmers in it).
• Velvet (my favourite waistcoat is purple velvet, made by Kenzo).
• Silk
• Fine synthetics whose surface resembles either of the above, such as my Patagonia silkweight black T-shirts.
• Brocade

And these surface effects:
• Shimmer
• Glow
• Translucency

All very evanescent and watery. I wonder if it has anything to do with my star sign—Pisces—not that I place any faith at all in any of that stuff?

Other than black and charcoal, it is almost impossible to find clothes in any of these colours and surfaces. Just two exceptions, oddly enough both waistcoats—a Patagonia acid yellow green one and the aforementioned Kenzo.

If I could find clothes in my favourite colours I'd be very happy indeed, but the local menswear seems to be nothing but black, charcoal, grey and colours so dirty and dull they may as well be grey.

People have always complained about how I seem to wear so much black, but the truth is I do so because that is the only colour on my list that I can find in the Australian shops.

Letter of Encouragement

2004-06-14T14:34:00.000+08:00

Today we received a Letter of Encouragement—that is what it said at the top—about the Philip Blenkinsop documentary film idea, from an Australian broadcaster. We being my executive director who emailed it straight on to me.

This IS encouraging. It means they have not passed on the idea, and the letter asks for some assurances, some clarifications, and for us to find one or more foreign broadcasters to enter into the mix. So I am working some more on it and hope that the result will answer all their questions.

Meanwhile the same treatment has also been sitting for some months at another Australian broadcaster as well as Film Australia, with both neither rejecting nor accepting it. Yet.

First Post

2004-06-14T13:02:00.000+08:00

I have set up this blog as a means to communicate with the various people I am collaborating with on various film, photography and publishing projects. It will act as a forum for conversations as well as an information repository and exchange. It is not intended be a public blog but anyone is quite welcome to read it.