I know I've been posting a lot lately, but bear with me, I have a little more to say.

Sam just moved out, which is of great sadness to all concerned. However he was replaced by the illustrious Kelly Penguin, so the continuity of the mansion is maintained. Me and Kelly have known each other in one way or another for three years now. It's hard to believe it's that long, or how many strange adventures we've been through together, but I'm glad to have known her, and by extention, Dr. Stitchi (aka Sam), and also Hugh.

So I spent today drafting, reading, and doing battle with Kelly's laptop. It was finally vanquished today, and is now proudly sporting Xubuntu 8.04. Go team Linux.

Currently listening to Coheed and Cambria. Ah those were the days. I wonder what Patrick is up to with his newfound adulthood. 

A friend of mine from school just had a kid, which is terrifying beyond belief.

In other more important news

We're HAVING A PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!1111

It's to be a Rude/Wine party. Come along. Dress Rude. See facebook for more details. Or message me.

There's other even bigger more excitinger news as well, but it can't be revealed til after Sunday.

p0yuh ate her dinner so fast she spewed it all up again. Animals are crap.

I miss the Kelly/Hugh/Bron/Me Mascot Mansion team. 

I wonder how many former Mascot Mansionians we can get to come to the party.

I'm lurking: the mansion I can hear: Welcome Home

xkcd.com/149/

Could be the best comic of all time.

When I grow up, I'm going to be a Finn.

Or a bicycle.

But I'm not going to be a med intern, cuz Lex, you've made that sound like it's just not very fun.

Cheese cures all ills in this world.

I'm reading a star wars novel. It's talking about a particular planet whose inhabitants are the star wars equivalent of the Amish. They don't like technology, and what they have is very backwards. All they have is laser guns and anti-gravity cars, and stuff like that. So backwards and primitive...

blue_budgie just discovered there were tomishiraga somen in the cupboard...

*walks away mysteriously*

So the last two times I've been out dancing, random girls have come up and complimented my dancing...

This is very unexpected, and I'm not sure whether they were being sarcastic, but they didn't seem to be. So that's nice...

The Crooked Fiddle Band were unreal last night. They lack a lot of stage presence, but their music makes up for it. And the support act being next to us in the crowd (us being blue_budgie , [Unknown LJ tag] and myself) and dancing like yahoos helped a lot. The support act was Mojo Juju and the Snake Oil Merchants, and they were also utterly unreal. The other support act was Flapp. We bought the CDs for the other two, and then realised as we were asking for them that Flapp were manning the counter and we'd just gone and not bought their CD. We felt a little bad, but it can't be helped.

Everyone should go dancing more often.

Apparently the Australian Communist Party is back, and plans to contest the next federal election. They are an umbrella of communist groups calling themselves the 'Communist Alliance.'

Are they serious?

Do they plan to make more sense than the Socialist Alliance currently does? Do they not realise communism stopped being cool at least thirty years ago? That even cuba is starting to cautiously step towards economic reform under its new leader?

The socialist alliance propaganda before the last election labelled the Greens to be militant imperialists. It also proposed the nationalisation of all industry AT THE SAME TIME as giving free tertiary education to all. How the fuck did they propose to afford that? Let alone the fuckup it would make of industry. (Dealt with a government institution lately?)

I'm at a loss for words. That people could still subscribe to an ideology that has been so totally discredited by as colossal an experiment as the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and Red China. You can't test an idea much better than testing it on that many people (1.5 billion?). The best thing you can say for it is that cubans and soviet peoples had high literacy. I can't see that much else positive came of it.

The other thing that concerns me is the concept of electing a party whose platform is the overthrow of the system. When you elect the liberals, labor, or the Greens, you're not advocating the overthrow of the constitution. But a communist party, by it's nature, seeks to overthrow the system. Look where that got the Weimar Republic in 1936... within a few years it was the Third Reich and was attempting to take on the world.

But there isn't too much cause for concern: in the great contest of ideas that is democracy, the communist party will be ignored as savagely as the Socialist Alliance is today. (At my polling booth, the socialist alliance got 7 votes out of 1200 cast.)

Gotta love democracy.

I'm lurking: the control centre I feel like: blah I can hear: stars tags: communism

Word on the street is that native american languages conceptualise the world spectacularly differently to Indo-European languages like english or Latin. Where we conceptualise everything as objects in space, and actions as forces acting on those objects, american languages conceptualise everything as processes or flows. This is a fairly monumental difference in world view, as far as I can tell.

One of the key issues here is that old issue of "What's in a name?" To my way of thinking, to name something is to confer a definition on it. Definitions like those in dictionaries, that is. They are essentially very static definitions in one way or another. For example, a cloud is allowed by its definition to take on many shapes, but once it condenses from water vapour into rain, it's no longer a cloud. Whereas a table's definition does require a particular shape. If you cut the legs off, it ceases to be a table. So names are a kind of straitjacket. Once we've consigned an object/concept/action to a named state, we expect certain behaviour from it, we expect it to have certain characteristics, and if it breaches these boundaries, then we consider it to be something else and give it a new name and a new set of expectations.

For the most part we (the West/indo-european speakers) imagine these objects (whether they be tangible things like a human, my cat, this apple, or intangible things like happiness or time) as something that can act, or be possessed, or that can have things done to them. These objects interact via actions of various qualities. The two objects in a particular interaction then continue as they were, unless the action so transformed them that they don't fit their names anymore. Further to this, once the action can be named, it becomes another object. Think of it like a flow chart. Whether a noun or a verb, it will consist of a name inside a box on the flowchart. To sum up, the focus is on the actor and the experiencer (patient) of the verb, rather than on the verb itself. Naturally the verb is important: in the sentence "the cat ate the mouse," there would be nothing to comment on if there was no eating. However the eating is seen as something the cat did, and that happened to the mouse. The focus is on what happened to the cat and the mouse and what the act of eating meant for them, rather than being on the act itself.

Now obviously I'm not an expert, I'm only an armchair linguist, and I'm basing my research purely on wikipedia (insert howls of derisive laughter here). Similarly, I'm making vast generalisations about languages of the americas that are differentiated into hundreds of language families. But here are my impressions and understandings of what seem to be widespread characteristics of american languages.

Whereas Indo-European relates to phenomena as objects in space, american languages (from Inuit to Aymara) seem to relate to phenomena as a series of flows. That sounds a little vague and fuzzy, but I believe it essentially relates to a focus on action and change, rather than a focus on static objects. To put it simply, the verb is more important than the noun.

This is evidenced by the sheer complexity of the verb in a lot of languages. They quite often can be conjugated to include information on subject/actor, object/patient, tense, mood, aspect, evidentiality, indirect object, direction, voice, and the manner in which a movement is made. There are probably other categories as well. Often nouns when they are directly expressed, are incorporated into the structure of the verb, resulting in those crazy long words which equate to entire english sentences, such as

adisbąąs "I'm starting to drive some kind of wheeled vehicle along" (Navajo)
tusaatsiarunnanngittualuujunga I can't hear very well. (Inuktitut)
ni-mit͡s-te:-t͡la-maki:-lti:-s I shall make somebody give something to you (Nahuatl, i.e. aztec)

Another aspect of this focus on the verb is the way many nouns are created from verbs in a language such as Inuktitut. In english we have a similar concept, in that a person who builds houses is known as a builder, and someone who paints is known as a painter. We do change the shape of the word: "He builds" is a different set of words to 'builder' though they are related. In inuktitut, the word "ilisaijuq" is both a verb, meaning 'he studies,' and a noun meaning 'student.' Since if we state about someone 'he studies,' we know he is a student, at least during the time that he is studying. But once again here, the focus is moved away from who 'he' is, to what he's doing. Rather than being given a name as such, it is merely stated what he is doing. The implication is that what he is doing is more important than what he is.

With this conceptualisation taken to its logical conclusion, everything becomes a series of actions or flows. Compare these Inuktitut sentences to their english equivalents.

Qannirmat qainngittunga = because it is snowing, i am not coming.

In the inuktitut, the whole concept is expressed with two words. They are both inflected verbs. The first verb is built around snowing, with suffixes for 4th person and causation, and the second verb is built around 'coming' with suffixes for negation and first person. Whereas in english, we are so focused on the object performing the action, that even where isn't something performing the action, we invent one! (i.e. snowing is purely a process/flow, no one is performing it, but english requires a dummy subject 'it').

I've been grappling with the distinction between the two conceptual metaphors for a while now, but reading one thing in particular crystalised it for me. I was reading the featured wikipedia article on 'the history of evolutionary' thought. It was discussing ancient greek, arabic, and chinese concepts of evolution, and pointed out the platonic and later the christian concepts of evolution, which was that species were a static category and that an animal couldn't diverge from that 'type.' It reminded me of the way we name things in western languages. For the most part, we expect something with a name to continue to be that thing indefinitely, and are then surprised when it changes. It seemed to me that it was reflective of our whole attitude as a civilisation. We build stone monuments and expect them to last forever. Parents get sad as children grow up and are no longer children. We try to fight off death long after the fight becomes futile. We understand protecting nature as trying to restore it to an unchanging 'perfect' state rather than learning to cohabit with it. Without wanting to stray too much into theology, the catholic church seems particularly caught up in this worldview. It talks so much of eternity. It acts as though the ending of old relationships and the beginning of new ones is unnatural. It sees itself as an institution which will continue til the end of time.

I can't help but wonder if all of this is reflective of our view of the world as static objects in space, with time merely a fourth spatial direction. Whereas if everything as seen as flowing, in action, moving, it's reflective of the very true concept that everything is in flux at all times, and that the only constant is change. I wonder does seeing the world like that make change easier to deal with?

I got a twitter account so that I could see what it's all about. Because the website basically told me nothing prior to signing in. Turns out that although most people are using it to notify their friends that they just successfully took a dump, or fell over, or had a thought about a potato, there are other uses. I set mine up to basically be an RSS feed of the drivel my political leaders are sending me. So now I'm watching a debate in parliament because the Ruddbot's twitter told me that parliament was in session. Neato.

It's still raining, and Othercat isn't impressed.

I just finally downloaded 'Further Down the Spiral,' a remix of Nine Inch Nails' 'Downward Spiral.'

The song 'The art of self-destruction part 1' is like listening to an orgasm in slow-motion.

Dear diary,

Today I memorised the present tense of the 3rd and 4th conjugation, and the -i stem of the 3rd declension. I've never felt more able to converse cum civibus romae....(with roman citizens).

I also bought a drizabone. It's black, and sexy.

It's a really depressing feeling to be sitting here in the gentle Sydney rain when that rain is needed so desperately down in Victoria...

Send it their way, Raiden! But without the lightning...

I feel like: annoyed

I love it how controversial posts get replies :)

I'm not sure I understand why, but Victoria isn't enforcing a total fire ban today...

Reading the news this morning and yesterday, watching the mounting death toll, had me in tears. It's strange how you can read about a foreign disaster like a war or a tsunami and it doesn't quite hit you, because you can't quite imagine it. I've never been in a tsunami or a war. But reading about a bushfire hits me that hard. I'm not going to say I've ever suffered because of bushfire personally, but I've been close enough to them to be preparing my house for the worst. So somehow the thought of losing your house to bushfire seems so real to me. I hope they're looking after everyone down there.

If everyone plans to continue living in this sunburnt country of ours, then I think they should all harden the fuck up and stop complaining about heat and blowflies, because that's at least 60% of the deal here.

If you've got an air conditioner then it means you should be living in Norway.. If you use fly spray it's because you're scared of insects. If you're scared of insects you should move somewhere where it doesn't get above zero degrees celsius too often. Antarctica is good. Otherwise just get on with sorta waving them away. Fly traps are good too.

Enough ranting from me :D

As usual, I'm not posting very often. But it occurred to me that if my interaction with the internet is purely a case of me absorbing information and never contributing, then karma will bite me.

My main use of the internet lately has been http://en.wiktionary.org. I'm attempting to teach myself latin and irish at the moment, as well as keeping on top of my greek. The latin entries are largely fantastic, and the irish entries are surprisingly good, where they exist. I'm amazed by the inability of language textbooks to get to the point and give you a broad overview of the language. Even if I don't learn other tenses of the verb right off the bat, I'd like to at least know what other tenses there are, as that gives me an idea what the purpose of the tense I am learning is. Anyhow, I'm making quite a bit of progress on both languages. In latin I've memorised the forms of the first and second declensions, and the present tense forms of the 1st and 2nd conjugations of verbs. In Irish I'm working my way through the speaking CD my ma got me, as well as deciphering the actual grammar of the words. I don't know how I'm supposed to remember phrases without knowing which words are which! So I'm having an absolute ball working on that.

Last night I went for a ride to the rocks at about 11pm. On the way back through the city, I stopped to listen to some christian preachers standing on a street corner on a milk crate. I was struck by the power of the guy's voice, he was making it carry out over the noise of crowds, music, and traffic, as clear as day. Then it struck me that whatever the virtue of his message (and I didn't particularly like his message), that he was cheapening it by voicing it in such a place. Standing on that street corner of a busy world city on a saturday night, I was inundated with messages if I cared to heed them. One corner advised me to eat Hungry Jacks. Another advised me that that hotel was the best place to eat, sleep, and drink. Another corner offered me a wealth of juicy pornography. The corner the preachers were on had upmarket bars that offered me another message, that of the benefits of high society, or something like that. Meanwhile women in revealing outfits wandered about with another message and temptation. On the spur of the moment, all of these other messages are more appealing than the fire and brimstone the preacher was offering (Do you choose to reject Jesus? For God has outlined the punishments that await you my friends...). So the preacher's message was just another message amongst the din, a din that any sane person tunes out of completely, lest it consume you! So, whatever the virtue of his message, it seemed diminished by the venue, condemned to be another ignored advertisement for a product I didn't want right then. I might add that I didn't follow the advice of any of the other messages on that street corner, I had riding to do!

The other thing that entertained me about the city last night, was that riding through heavy traffic (all the rice burners cruising for chicks), the smell of the cologne and perfume of the folks attending bars actually overpowered the smell of car exhaust. I can't imagine how intense it must have been inside the clubs...

Sorry to everyone whose blogs I've been failing to read. The interwubz is a big place and I'm largely lost in it. According to the bureau of statistics, the "iGeneration" is from 1986 onwards and is marked by a complete taking for granted of gadgets and the always-online lifestyle. I was born in 1984, so I'm merely a generation barely holding on to the technological roller coaster. That being said, I am sitting on my verandah typing this on my laptop, which is connected to my cable internet wirelessly through two routers, one of which is a DHCP server, and one of which isn't. I also managed to set up port forwarding to my linux torrent client on a dual boot machine.... So who is the more "at home" with technology? The kid with the iphone who tells their friends, via twitter, everything they do on a five minute by five minute basis and spends hours every day grooming their online presence via MySpazz? Or the guy who knows that a DHCP server is, manages a home network of five computers with four different operating systems and a robotic armenian bunny, and who set up a dual boot linux/winxp computer just to see what would happen?

These are the words of the militantspacepygmy...

Brace yourselves, this is going to be longwinded.

As I said previously, last weekend I went to my cousin's wedding. The wedding itself was very nice. It was a casual, secular affair on a clifftop overlooking the ocean. The groom was wearing board shorts and a white shirt and looked as nice as I've ever seen him. His bride was wearing a very pretty white dress. The whole thing was short, sharp, romantic, and pretty. They hadn't hired a photographer at all, and they were lucky I turned up with an SLR and a tripod. With help from my gorgeous photoshopmagician, we put together a decent set of photos for them.

Outside the wedding however, it was a circus. The entire extended family (i.e. three generations worth) of family stayed in the one large house and spent the weekend drinking heavily and fighting and arguing. To me it's such a strange thing as I'm not much of a fighter. I like a good discussion or debate, but pointless and vicious arguing just doesn't turn me on.

This weekend we went to a friend's wedding. Although she's a close friend, she's from Bathurst and so I didn't know anyone at the wedding apart from her immediate family, who obviously were mostly fairly busy with organising... Unlike my cousin's wedding, this one was a very religious and very formal affair. It was essentially a 'traditional' wedding. Something new for me! To my way of thinking though, the wedding was less a wedding and more an opportunity for all concerned to obsess over the notion that Jesus died for our sins. All the music was about this notion. It was also referred to as often as possible by both ministers who were present, the bride, the groom, the best man, the maid of honour, etc. The only people who didn't constantly return to this theme were the bride's parents. The wedding went for at least an hour and a half. We didn't sing the songs/hymns since as non-christians it was a bit disingenuous singing praise for an interpretation of the divine that we diverge from. I got at least one dirty look for the fact that I wasn't singing. But I have no idea who she was so it hardly matters.

I should stress here that I'm truly happy for my friend, and seeing her happy and joyful in her wedding made me feel fantastic, and made me feel that it was worth making the flying trip over to see the wedding! She looked absolutely fantastic in her dress and veil, which suited her perfectly. Her boy was quite dashing as well...he and the groomsmen had slightly military-styled jackets with big gold buttons every 4cm or so down the front, and vests underneath to match. They looked very tough.

The reception continued the Jesus bandwagon. We heard the story of how my friend had converted to christianity. It went something along the lines of her having a rough time during a particular period and the maid of honour befriended her and invited her to the church. Greeted with that enthusiasm that seems reserved for evangelical christians, she quickly joined up. I'm not much of a fan of this kind of 'preying on the down' but at the same time I appreciate that my friend is happier than I've ever known her. I completely reject her and her friends' efforts to proselytise in Thailand. I think the Thais are happy enough being buddhist or whichever religion the individual Thai happens to be. I could so much more about the differences I have with my friend on religion, but I'll leave it for now and just say that I'm happy that she's happy.

One positive spin on the enthusiasm the entire lot of them were showing for their faith was that both Jess and I are a lot more inspired to bring our own religious beliefs much more into our daily lives. We've been attending the full moon rituals on and off, though we haven't been for a while due to them always clashing with other things. But I'd like to incorporate a much stronger sense of ritual into our lives.

I used to be fairly anti-ritual, most likely in reaction to Catholicism. I couldn't see the point of it. I went to a Lutheran service and was attracted to the fact that it was more focused on what was being said than on the carrying out of the service. The sermon appeared to be the most important part of the service, as opposed to the Catholic Mass where the preparation and receiving of the Eucharist seems to be the most important part. I also stalled reading Cunningham's book Cunningham's book once it went beyond the philosophy and started dealing with ritual. Yet attending the Greek Orthodox church service has changed my mind. The orthodox service is to Catholicism what Catholicism is to Protestantism in terms of ritualism. The service is conducted in ancient greek (I'm not sure what timeperiod, but probably Koine). During the entire service a group of old men are singing/chanting, also in ancient greek. Apart from the sermon which is repeated in both modern greek and english, the entire service is meaningless on an immediate level. Yet the singing/chanting resonates at a deeper level within you, bringing you up into a higher level of vibration within yourself. While you don't understand the words, the music speaks to you in a language beyond language. Similarly the rituals are something akin to magic, expressing in themselves a desire for the continuity of Greekness, as though the life of that race is inextricably linked into its rituals and stories.

So I plan to revisit Cunningham and learn a little of how he has developed his own Book of Shadows (his personal description of the rituals he has developed for himself) and begin to develop our own with Jess... Rituals not dictated by a heirarchy who insists that worship must be conducted in a specific way (as with Catholicism) or handed down unquestioningly from ancient time (as with Orthodoxy). Just a little piece of magic each day that reflects something held dear at a level deeper than words. Whether a one minute session of thankfulness to Lugh for the gift of music, or an invocation to Apollo to chase away the interminable Sydney rain, the idea is to connect to and be thankful for those things we hold dearest. And also an effort to reconnect with the stories of our own races, the celts and the hellenes. Because to paraphrase Nullah, the young boy in the movie Australia, if you don't have a story, you don't know who you are.

I think to a certain extent the reason why the whole Judaeo-Christian shebang doesn't appeal to me is that it's not my story. It's not a bad story but it doesn't resonate with me the way celtic and english/germanic stories resonate with me because it's not a story of my ancestors. It doesn't tell me anything about where I'm from and gives a very narrow view of where I'm going. I think the West has let stories become something that is just about entertainment, about selling things, or even about just about passing the time. But they go a lot deeper than that.

I was going to write a bit of a review about Australia... But I'll get round to that. This post is long enough.

I feel like: contemplative tags: religion, weddings

Friday night was party at the Mascot Mansion night... My main memory (its a hazy night) was dancing/jumping on Stitchi's bed with Kelly and Stitchi singing the wine song by the cat empire. My mum was standing in the doorway drinking rum and singing loudly also. After that we went into the loungeroom and danced to infected mushroom. Crazy and tiring and awesomeness. I think I drank a litre and a half of tawny port, which I probably shouldn't have, but I enjoyed it.

Then the weekend was my cousin's wedding... which involved much of the extended family sharing a big holiday house for two nights. Since they also shared many bottles of rum, and irish heritage, the night inevitably erupted into fighting. Multi-directional and pointless, and often without any actual reasons, many different relatives dug up all their angst and hurled it at whoever they deemed appropriate. The family fights were against a backdrop of the local 17 year olds having a boozeup and punchup on the beach in front of our holiday house. The fighting continued through the next morning and into the reception after the wedding, where my cousin was in the midst of arguments while cutting the cake. I refuse to take sides in any of it so I don't wish to paint any particular one of them as a perpetrator, but what a kerfuffle, fiasco, and circus. All mad.

I feel like: annoyed

Now I haven't been on here in a while!

So I'm going to try and start again...

Holidays are on, after a very successful semester. I got 84% in Greek 1B and I would have made it into High Distinction territory if I had submitted all the assignments! (Curse my laziness). I also did very well in Design Studio, which was conducted by the legendary Glenn Murcutt, green architect extraordinaire. I gained a lot from talking to him extensively and listening to his critiques of both mine and other people's works. He knew me by name since I had conducted the field survey and also because he took an interest in my efforts to fully work out the technical side of the project (sizing solar power arrays and composting toilets for example) before I tried to design my shiny building. I finished the semester with my tutor asking me to put my work in the exhibition (the three or four better projects in each class of ten were put in the exhibition). During the exhibition I again chatted to Glenn and he began critiquing the model I'd submitted. I realised that he hadn't seen me present my work, and I hadn't put the model in the exhibition, which meant he'd paid enough attention to my work to realise the model was mine even though it was sitting anonymously upstairs. So I asked him for a reference, to which he agreed to write one for me. I'm still waiting for it however... I may have to write to him again and remind him.

My projects for the summer include:
- Photography.....architectural, my beautiful girl, and Cooma.
- Sorting photos: I need to get some ready for the Cooma Show!
- Getting my vege garden back into order.
- Setting up an altar, attending full moon ceremonies, and learning more about paganism.
- recording a growing number of vinyl LPs into digital format. These came from Jess' dad, my old man, and a chunky collection of greek records inherited by Jess from her great aunt who passed away recently.
- Reading Harry Potter in french (I'm not using french at all, I need to practice. I want to at least keep my reading and writing skills up to speed!)
- Keep doing up my new project: a 1973 Toyota Corona. I spent the weekend in Cooma with Jessica rebuilding the suspension with parts off my old one. There's something satisfying about driving back to Sydney on suspension that I rebuilt myself and having it work!
- Understanding english grammar....which is VERY difficult. Greek is much easier.
- Continuing the development of my language, Ishtáhr. In particular I want to redefine the 'to be' paradigm, since I've learnt that many language families don't even have an equivalent of the 'be' copula, and because I found out that the reason 'to be' is so irregular is because it's a suppletive verb built out of parts of four separate indo-european verbs. I know grammar is boring to most people, but discovering that the other day has fairly well transformed my understanding of the world.
- long bike rides: I'm hoping to ride to the Central Coast this saturday for my cousin's wedding, but it depends on whether I can get my bike sufficiently operational! (Shimano has been having shipping problems so I'm having trouble getting brake pads! Though I got shiny new handlebars).
- Re-exploring Suicide Girls... my membership lapsed and I missed six months worth of beautifulness.

Hope everyone is well in LJ land.

I'm lurking: the mascot mansion I feel like: infuriated I can hear: antichrist superstar tags: restart

I've just spent the last two hours completely absorbed in Deviant Art. I have to do some photography soon.

I have too many hobbies, and as a result, they are all suffering from lack of attention. Livejournal is yet another one of those hobbies that has been suffering.

The world is so full of amazing things that I want to be involved in but I never have time to devote myself to what I want to devote myself to.

Here are just a few projects I'm currently involved in (either actively or not):

1. Creation of my own language: Ishtáhr.
2. Creation of a fantasy world, mapped to fairly ridiculous detail, including all cultures, races, histories, and associated things.
3. Photography, both fashion and otherwise.
4. Learning Greek (going quite well).
5. Learning French.
6. Learning Piano (Quite alright, owing to 5 years of proper lessons).
7. Learning Bass Guitar (languishing, haven't picked it up in months).
8. Learning Guitar (professional lessons for a while, haven't played in ages).
9. Vege gardening
10. Learning to rebuild and repair my recently purchased 1973 Corona.
11. Researching green architecture.
12. Listening to and really appreciating my music collection, all the while sorting it obsessive/compulsively into categories.
13. Going for long bike rides.
14. Exploring abandoned buildings.
15. Going for drives in the country.
16. Soaking up the rich cultural milieu of this city (festivals, art, music, etc.)
17. Drinking (actually failing to have enough time for this important activity!)

These are just a few things.... And of course while I'm failing to devote enough attention to any of these, I'm also failing to devote enough attention to my girl. Well... I spend almost all my time with her, but not enough quality time away from homework!

Ah well.

Saw Opeth in Melbourne on friday. The singer is deliciously geeky. I may be going to have his babies.

Melbourne is the shiznit. End of story. (If you need proof, consider bottlos that are open 24 hours compared to Sydney's lousy anti-fun regulations that shut them at 9).

I'm lurking: the big smoke I feel like: cheerful I can hear: closure

Currently tossing up whether to renew my SG account which expired yesterday or to focus my attention on deviantart. I really need to get some new photos up on to deviantart. SG has been fun, but I'm loathe to give money to the evil empire (haha). On the flip side, the work of a lot of their models and photographers is a fairly big inspiration to me, and it's a shame to lose that aspect of it. However, my favourite photographer is Michael aka Pelicanh, a friend of Lithium Picnic, and his work is all on DA.

In other developments I'm currently studying under the illustrious Glen Murcutt...which is so far quite...refreshing and enlightening... compared to the usual tripe the Architecture Faculty deals out. In his first lecture he just about shouted at us that we weren't going to be 'creating images' in this project. Meaning that the focus won't be on making buildings that will look good in an architecture magazine.

The downside is that our site is a swamp on the north coast. The previous year got a clifftop on the escarpment near Armidale with a 500m drop into a richly forested valley. The year before got the endless red sand of the western desert near Broken Hill. We get a swamp full of leeches. FAIL. Just to get the bitching out of the way, I'd also like to discuss the fact that I've been appointed to conduct a detail survey over on 6ha of land with the swamp in the middle of it, using two dumpy levels, no theodolites, and a team of inexperienced people who seem only partially keen to respect my authority. (I worked for surveyors for several years and partially completed a degree in surveying, so I R TEH SURVEYOR dammit). It's kind of like being given a soldering iron and a lump of silicon and being asked to build an alarm clock. It's possible, but it's gonna be a pain in the arse.

The brief is to build a research station for a bunch of scientists researching the swamp. It has to be self-sustaining in electricity, water and waste disposal. It also has to be constructed to as not to disrupt the swamp. It's an awesome brief and I can't wait to sink my teeth into it.

I also have new flatmates! Stitchi is a radcore creative fella who works for a theatre company and gets himself busy with various festivals and whatnot. His toy army has invaded the house and is threatening to dislodge the penguins in a coup. Hannah is a chem eng student from uni who plays touch football, is passionate about composting, and...well I haven't got to know her that well yet but she is rad nonetheless. Last night we actually made use of our loungeroom, hanging out and playing chess and laughing and telling stories. It was...homely!

Anyway, back to work for me.

I'm lurking: sydney home I feel like: chipper I can hear: truth be told

I got out of the habit of posting while I was in dialupland, so now that I'm back in the big smoke and have the bandwidth to play with, I'm still out of the habit. On top of that, life is hectic. I have drafting to do, fun to have, and uni work to do. Gah! No time.

But I'm back into reading people's journals... Keep up the good work.

Tris

Hello team livejournal. I haven't been round these parts for a while, but the interwubz is a busy place.

Just got my uni results. Distinctions all round. That's never happened before. I'm rather chuffed. Previously, every time I got a distinction for something, I failed something else. This system is far better. The secret? I actually studied this semester. I think I'll continue trialling that next semester.

I'm in Cooma at the moment. Last night was a frozen desolate kind of night, with howling winds. I spent the night in front of an open fire though, which although they aren't so great at heating the whole room, do wonders for your perception of how warm you are. Sitting in front of the fire, with you front half at forty degrees and your back half at five, you watch the warm colours dancing in the flames, and you feel warm. Perfect, I say. The snow came unexpectedly during dinner. I'd checked the skies before dinner and the stars dominated, not a cloud in sight. After dinner it was the same, except for the fluffy white carpet laid over everything.

Now I must needs get on with my work, drafting up some townhouses for some folks in town. The world's a-changing, and in a way you'd like to think that home is immune to it, but this town and this place aren't the place I grew up in. It's not always a bad thing, but it's hard to relate to sometimes. It's strange to see mcmansions blooming on the edge of a small cosy town. It's stranger still to be contributing to that.

Part of the plan for this end of the year is to look for some work experience for uni. I need to work in an architectural firm for six months, and it has to be one that fits certain criteria established by the uni. I'd like to get into somewhere that is focussed on green building. I'd ideally like to find somewhere interested in earth construction. Hopefully I'll get what I want.

And congratulations to my beautiful girl, who also got radcore marks this semester. :) I'm proud of you lil one.

I'm lurking: cooma alpine snow I feel like: artistic I can hear: wishbone ash