Category Archives: About me

Ghostpatrol – it’s art, not vandalism!

Posted on June 21, 2010 | 1 comment

For quite a while I have been cyber-stalking some Melbourne artists – Miso and Ghostpatrol. I regularly check out their websites, read about them and curse myself every time I miss their shows in Melbourne.

A few months ago, a wonderful thing happened. Ghostpatrol put a picture on my dad’s surgery in Fitzroy! (see pic below). I was visiting family in Melbourne, so saw it as I was driving by.

Picture on wall by ghostpatrol

My dad and his Ghostpatrol art

The broken surgery window you can see is part of the story too. Very early one morning, someone had pushed in the glass pane. Dad did a temporary repair, and the next night, the picture appeared.

My parents were immediately suspicious. They had a crazy theory that someone had broken the window (vandalism), and then pasted up a picture (graffiti). I had to energetically convince them that it was Art, and that they should NOT under any circumstances scrape it off. I shudder to think what they would have done if I hadn’t had been there …

It was so incredibly satisfying to see the beautiful brown paper boy peering out at me from the wall. Not just a picture on a website. Within a few days, the picture had been peeled away by wind and rain, but for a short time, the virtual had become real.

Brought to you by the Interweb – Pencil art

Ghostpatrol creates adorable artworks on sets of pencils… Jennifer Maestre makes very weird organic sculptures from pencils too.

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Games I play

Posted on June 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

Scrabble

Downloaded my second iPhone app this week – Scrabble. (The first was Twitter, because I feel like I really should be tweeting more, but can’t quite think what to write.)

I love it. Since I have always had a passion for words, writing and reading, Scrabble is a joy for me. Unfortunately, my almost-husband has no interest in it. The kids are not quite literate enough yet, and a game with them would probably involve explaining why we don’t stick Scrabble tiles in the toaster.

Crosswords

I envy people who have:

  1. the time to do crosswords
  2. the self-control to not look up every third answer on the Internet
  3. a partner who doesn’t think that crosswords should only be printed on novelty toilet paper.

I feel especially jealous when I see romantic couples without children having leisurely brunches over the weekend super brain crunching cryptic crosswords.

Brought to you by the InterWeb – Extra wide toasters

I don’t know why you would want a toaster that can toast for 2 hours, but here it is http://www.toasterovensguide.com/black-and-decker-cto6301-toaster-oven.htm

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Have you got the time?

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

I once had a digital watch that flipped open to reveal a secret compartment filled with little sweets. Genius.

I used to admire watches that promised more than telling time – like calculator watches with cute fiddly little rubber buttons, or complicated dials showing phases of the moon and atmospheric pressure.

I toyed with the idea of buying a futuristic cuboid watches with huge digital numbers (hello dear Mr Starck). But with digital watches you can only see one time – now. Living in the moment. (Watch geeks love the analog Reveal watch. It cleverly only shows the current time – mimicking a digital display.)

Most days I feel so rushed that I like the perspective of the past (“It’s been 57 minutes since I thought about eating.”) and the future (“13 minutes until the pie is done.”) So I have simple analog watches* that just tell the time.

Isn’t it weird that we still wear watches? Almost everything around tells us the time – mobile phones, microwaves, computers, cars, cameras. Why do we still need/like to wear our time on our wrists?

* I have a Mondaine Swiss Railway watch and an M&Co 10-One-4 watch.

Brought to you by the Interweb – Last  minute fancy dress costumes

Oops – forgot that the party you’re going off to is fancy dress? Here are some last minute and quite odd costume ideas. The Furry Nightmare Vest is terrifying.

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Usability of clever toilets and iPhones

Posted on May 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

The restaurant was modern, smart and friendly. The toilets were modern, smart and baffling. It took me quite a while to figure out how to turn the taps on. I cautiously waved my hands around, pressed a few metal discs, and even tried stepping on parts of the floor (I have been fooled by foot-operated taps before).

The first picture below shows the magical mystery sink. The second photo shows the smart-arse ‘tap’ in action.

Clever wash basin with hidden taps

clever wash basin with water

I was very pleased that I worked it out, without having to seek assistance. Why did the bathroom experience designer, or whatever they are called, make something very practical and necessary – washing hands, so difficult?

The intuitive and smug iPhone interface

When I became an iPerson, my brother assured me that it was all very simple to use. I just needed to play with it. I’m reinforcing a gender stereotype, but I would have preferred an old-fashioned user manual, not just a little leaflet telling me how simple everything is. All the blokes I know with iPhones seem very happy to spend hours fiddling away figuring out just how many cool things they can do. Learn through play.

Between kids, work, friends and household duties, I haven’t found many opportunities to stroke the iPhone and marvel at it’s attractive design. As a result, I still haven’t moved far beyond the basic mobile functions – make and receive calls, browse websites, make notes, use the calculator… I haven’t even downloaded an app!

My iPhone shines smugly at me: “You are not quite worthy of my glossy features and seamlessly smooth lifestyle enabling functions.”

Brought to you by the Interweb – iPhone crochet craft
I love crochet – by other people, not me. I want someone to make me a crochet iPhone toy.

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People v machines

Posted on May 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

I listened to the Important Business Man complain about the hardships of his Important Job to the furiously busy café owner, as I waited for my toasted cheese and tomato sandwich (wholegrain, no salt and pepper).

It would be very convenient if I could just text or email my order ahead, on the way to work, and then pick up my order – bypassing the Important Moaning Business People. Easy, time-saving and efficient. And removing yet another human interaction from my life.

Pros and cons of non-human transactions:

  • Online banking – hooray. No more wasted time in bank queues, wondering whether the same person designed the carpet AND the uniforms.
  • Ticket machines at train stations – hooray x2 now that our local station has a machine that takes cards. For readers living outside of New South Wales, yes – this is 2010, and yes – quite a few machines here will only take cash.
  • Mass Christmas ” oh haven’t we had a busy year” emails – boo. It’s great to hear what you and the brood have been up to, but I really really miss handwritten letters. And it’s not hard to pick up the phone/ mobile/ Skype handset thingy…
  • Sending virtual gifts – boo. Please don’t throw a smoked ham at me or grow me a virtual herb garden on Facebook. Why not buy some fresh cinnamon donuts to share for afternoon tea?

Our local shops include 4 cafes*. At my favourite one, the staff know my name, talk to my kids, give us free treats. It’s lovely and peronal and would not happen if I pre-ordered by mobile phone.

*We are a very up-and-coming neighbourhood. Refer to the original post on Stuff White People Like about coffee. And for bonus SWPL points,  I am an Asian Girl and my kids have two last names!

Brought to you by the Interweb – Donuts in art

I know donuts are ‘treat food’ (in kid-speak), but they are also a recurring theme in contemporary art. Look at these artistic rings of fried dough.

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A selection of helpful notices from my office

Posted on April 22, 2010 | 3 comments

Sometimes I feel as if I have too much information in my life. Newspapers, news on television, magazines, emails, magazines, books, newsletters, websites … And today I counted 8 notices in the (very small) kitchen and 4 in the (also small) bathroom. See selection of most ridiculous below.

Kitchen notice with mouse picture

A very tidy mouse

kitchen notice about using too much milk

A mug half-full or half-empty?

kitchen notice about sandwich press

Simple sandwich rules

Bathroom notice about proper toilet use

Improper toilet use

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I am an iPerson

Posted on April 15, 2010 | 2 comments

Oops. I have an iPhone.

Not long after my smug anti-iPhone post ‘It’s not real until it’s an iPhone app‘, I have become an iPerson. We had a series of internal family phone swaps:

  1. My sneaky brother convinced our mum that he would make better use of her new iPhone. (Well, she wasn’t using it properly anyway …)
  2. Our mum has gone back to her non-i phone.
  3. I have my brother’s old iToy. (As he warned me, the battery is crap, and I think he dropped it in water somewhere… But I’m not fussy.)
  4. My almost-husband has my old non-i phone.

So, I don’t hate it. My typing/tapping has improved slowly. I like the swiping and swooping of the screen.

I still don’t think I NEED it, but as expected, I am browsing the web a lot more than I used to, just because I can. And I haven’t even begun to investigate downloading apps yet.

Brought to you by the Interweb – fingerprints from your ears

As I marvelled at the amount of ear grease left on my iPhone, I wondered if we could use our unique earprints to replace PINs and passwords. I found out that scientsts have been researching ‘acoustic fingerprints‘ as a way to add security to phones.

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The long and winding path to photo album happiness

Posted on April 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

I saw a little boy peering through a digital camera at a park bench. He was taking many pictures at very close range, possibly quite artistic ones in an abstract way. Grandma bustled over, saying: “Stop wasting the film, William!” The mother sipped her coffee and sighed: “It’s OK mum, it’s DIGITAL. It doesn’t use film.”

Years ago, I reluctantly gave up on film when it became too expensive to develop. However, I still try to keep my photo albums of printed photos (almost) current. It is a slow and sometimes tedious process of sifting and sorting and procrastinating …

1. Take far too many pictures. Download them to computer.
2. Import photos in to Adobe Photoshop Elements. Wait a few days for Paul to tag them (location, people, event etc). Leave them for a while.
3. When ‘print photos’ has been on my list of things to do for many weeks, I start doing the first photo cull. Delete the following:
• any shots where I look confused, odd and/or old
• the 20 extra shots of the same scene that we took ‘just in case the first one didn’t work out’
• any photos where the kids had runny noses, strange bruises or too much blue icing on their faces.
Then I get bored.
4. A few weeks later, go back and realise that we still have too many photos. Delete even more photos of the kids looking cute. We have lots of those already.
5. Finally upload the limited selection to Flikr. This is our online backup of hi-res files.
6. Then transfer from Flikr to Snapfish for printing. Feel a bit worried when I see that the shopping cart has $80 of photos to print. Make a cup of tea.
7. Delete more photos from shopping cart. Make the order and wait for pictures.
8. A few days later, pictures arrive. I flick through them and leave them on the shelf next to the photo albums. Some time passes.
9. I put the pictures in chronological order, and then slot them in to the photo album. I write in dates pictures were taken and some locations. Hooray – the photo albums are up to date. (NB: Since step 1 above, we have taken many many more pictures… sigh …)
10. A few months later, upload some to Facebook.

Is it worth it?

Brought to you by the InterWeb – your face is as big as my bed

I love you so much that I made your face my duvet cover – see personalised bedding! I can imagine a charming picture of hubby as the duvet and a lovely child on each pillow.

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It’s not real until it’s an iPhone app

Posted on March 18, 2010 | 3 comments

No, I don’t have an iPhone. My mother has one*, but I don’t. They are very pretty, but I don’t quite see the point. Not yet. Because my mobile is only OK-but-not-great for web browsing, I don’t do it much. Key times for web browsing so far have been:

  • waiting for a train
  • waiting for my husband who is in the hardware store, whilst I sit in the car with sleeping kids
  • waiting for the bank teller to methodically stamp his/her bits of paper and open/shut drawers.

I am very attracted to the iPhone’s clean, modern look. If I buy one, I am sure I will use it a lot, and then wonder how I coped without it. Until then, I am happy to not know what I am missing.

*My mother only uses her iPhone to make and receive calls, so I wouldn’t say that she is fully exploring the rich and varied world of Internet goodness with it. However, she does look very contemporary.

My iPhone observations

Many of the cool iPhone features are cool because they look like the real-life (non-digital) thing they are simulating.  When the early-adopters cradled their new itoys in their palms and displayed their latest purchases, they showed me calculators that looked JUST LIKE a real calculator; pinball games that looked JUST LIKE real pinball games ; maps that looked JUST LIKE real maps ….

Why are physical things just automatically cooler when they become digital? Why is one of the definitions of online coolness, how Real it looks?

I can not quite get the hang of the touch screen for typing. I felt very silly because I was typing like a unco-ordinated fish, if a fish was wanting to send a text message. Previous studies have shown that the iPhone keypad is less efficient than physical QWERTY keypads, so I’m not alone.

Brought to you by the InterWeb – clever animals in labs

At the University of Vienna, they have a department of Cognitive Biology. They have pigeons, clever dogs, and even tortoises in their fascinating labs.

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Microwave cuisine

Posted on March 7, 2010 | Leave a comment

Following on from my post last month about life before microwaves …

A friend, whose mother was an early-adopter of microwave technology, demonstrated how to magically nuke chunks of Coon cheddar cheese on Salada crackers (quick and tasty hors d’oeuvre in seconds!). When we got our own microwave, I used to melt chocolates* then eat them with a teaspoon (a quick and tasty dessert in seconds!).

*I believe they were After Eight dinner mints, sadly no longer fashionable in Australia.

Microwave alive

I was an avid fan of X-files. In the episode Ghost in the Machine, various digital devices start taking on a life of their own. Not long after watching this, I came home by myself one day and noticed that the microwave display was flashing ominously: “help me help me help me”. My first thought was, of course, “My mother’s microwave is self-aware, and it’s talking to me! How do I find out if we have an X-files department in Melbourne?!” A few calmer seconds later, I realised that there had been a local power blackout and all other appliances also needed to be reset. I was a little disappointed.

Lots of people think the Ghost in the machine episode sucked. See IMDB and wikipedia entries, where fanboys and girls are really too harsh. It was the 90’s and I remember that episode fondly.

Brought to you by the Interweb – half a kilo of chocolate, they call it a Slab!

It’s 500g of chocolate, so of course they call it a slab.  See the shiny pictures of Giant Chocolate Slabs.

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