my prosthetic eye

Scottish fold

2009-08-04T16:37:00.001+12:00

Oh hello.

schizophrenia

2009-06-28T16:16:00.001+12:00

a few more bowling photos

2009-06-28T11:38:00.003+12:00

i have bad internet that doesn't let me update my blog very quickly. as a result, it takes ages to update my photos. too bad. stink. ok. bowling photos, here we go....

bob - best of bowling.

2009-06-25T00:45:00.003+12:00

photos from car

2009-06-24T23:43:00.004+12:00

deleted photos from last post that stupid blogger didn't add to my account for some stupid reason

2009-06-24T19:43:00.004+12:00

mor photeoeoeoes - sans explications

2009-06-24T19:36:00.000+12:00

shopflat, and flower at night

2009-06-20T20:02:00.003+12:00

hello. flower photos are from directly outside my front door, ~1 hour ago. the two photos of the light are from dj's flat. in samdrub's room, i tried photographing the central light using two different pre-processing white balance filters. one is turned green, one turned red. final two shots are of dj, and a view of Maori hill from Signal Hill road. enjoy!

flash as

2009-06-09T21:23:00.004+12:00

Ages ago my dad gave (lent) me a flash to use for my Nikon. This is cool for two reasons. It's better than the on-board flash for my camera - although I have no idea how to use it properly. Dar. But! It's detachable! and it has a "test" function, which is pretty wicked. This means that I can utilize the flash function from a non-standard position. It's pretty crude - flashes are supposed to be set up using particular settings and arrangements, etc. but in a dark room, long exposure (~30"), low-ish ISO, medium aperture setting... works well. I did a little bit of editing afterward, but this was simply to darken the image so that the lighting effects stand out a little. choice.

Jeremy's gig

2009-06-08T21:22:00.004+12:00

Hey suckers,

Jeremy played a gig the other week with his new (old) band, Federales. Personally, I liked the original name, Bat Country more, but that's all good. Craig, JC, JC, Craig, Craig. Craig had, by the end of the evening, spilt approximately 5 drinks. When he spilt the last one, he proceeded to roll in it in order to absorb it off the carpet. Awesome. That man is a legend.

New photers

2009-05-30T16:10:00.001+12:00

Letter I wrote

2009-01-08T14:13:00.003+13:00

NZ is currently having a bit of a crisis with regards to its Copyright Act. I wrote this letter to a couple of politicans to address the topic:

Hi,

I have been informed by one of my regular news websites that there are plans for a change in New Zealand copyright law that provides for individuals having their Internet access severed should they be accused of Internet-based copyright infringement - the cited portion inspecifically being 92A of the act. I am assuming that my understanding of the change is correct, in that the accusation is all that is sufficient for an individual to be affected by this act, and that measures for a prosecution or defense to be entered in to is not necessary for the act to take effect. Beyond the fact that it is an unnecessarily harsh and ill considered to cessate a citizen's access to the Internet for a copyright crime, to do so without space for defence or assessment seems ridiculous and ill considered. I recognise the fact that in the time of a recession governments tend to prioritize economic systems that benefit industries over citizens, however, this is not a situation that benefits consumers or producers. I feel that, even were the accused guilty of copyright infringement, taking away Internet access just simply seems to take the easy way out. I don't even really understand how this could be enforceable. Given that, statistically speaking, most people that are subverting copyright are going to be young persons in shared housing, monitoring who, exactly, is responsible for breaking the law, or preventing them from doing it again would be a nightmare. It sounds expensive, ill planned, and needlessly myopic in its preparation for use. Even were the bill to be more lenient, simply severing an individual's access to the Internet seems to be a somewhat ridiculous in that it is a fairly redundant inconvenience, instead of a legitimate provision for improving the systems of society. I believe that I have understood this change to the act as it has been explained to me, and, if it stands as the correct interpretation of the act, then I feel that it must be changed or removed. I voted for the Green Party with my party vote in the last election, and, while I am aware that this does not cause you any social "debt" to me, I voted because I believe that we share a similar set of beliefs and principles with regards to New Zealand's future. I hope that you share my beliefs that this Act is an awkward an unncessary step in the wrong direction, and I would appreciate any indication that this act is going to be challenged in its procession through parliament.

So, yeah, it's not the best, but it'll do.

UPDATE: Original source article is here.

Internetting troubles

2009-01-06T15:31:00.003+13:00

Okay, so it's been 2/3 weeks since I last updated. Reasons? No good ones. Basically I can't access the internet from home, so I can't upload all the photos that I've taken very easily. I managed to get a little bit of time to upload some on to facebook the other day, but not really all that much. I'm sorry. Really, I am. As the person that probably gets the most satisfaction (a megre amount, admittedly) out of this blog, I would suggest that I am the most sorry at this event. Cry me a river, call me a waaaahmbulance or something. Go ahead, make my day.

Me! Booyah!

2008-12-21T13:10:00.003+13:00

another church - where's the impressive contemporary architechture asthetic in dunedin? wait, why do I bother....

2008-12-21T09:51:00.005+13:00

drop of water

2008-12-21T09:47:00.002+13:00

Title? What title?

2008-12-21T09:41:00.002+13:00

collage of my flat

2008-12-21T09:37:00.004+13:00

church

2008-12-19T23:20:00.005+13:00

work do

2008-12-19T23:16:00.002+13:00

moi

2008-12-19T23:12:00.002+13:00

Vote

2008-12-16T12:06:00.004+13:00

Right. It's your chance to vote. I've put up a Poll on the right hand side of the page, so now you can enact your technologically enabled right to express your opinion. It's like a real Neilson poll: i.e. your voting is limited to the choices that I'm giving you, they're open to my eventual interpretation from my unique position of authority, your response is meaningless because it doesn't detail your reasons, the question is contextless and crap, and voting's not going to change anything. You've got until the day after Waitangi Day to make your choice. I figured it's an appropriate day to reflect on what the treaty is actually doing for our country. What do I say? Decentralize into anarchosyndicalist city states. It'd be more environmentally friendly too.

me

2008-12-15T21:59:00.003+13:00

Galleree

2008-12-15T21:55:00.001+13:00

Foooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

2008-12-15T21:53:00.004+13:00

Town hall

2008-12-15T21:47:00.002+13:00

Dave

2008-12-15T21:43:00.004+13:00

Anya and Jared waggling fingers

2008-12-10T19:25:00.002+13:00

bring it? i already brought it

2008-12-10T19:17:00.004+13:00

Jared at Mount Sinai

2008-12-10T19:06:00.006+13:00

Water

2008-12-10T19:00:00.001+13:00

Mr. Lizard.

2008-12-10T18:53:00.004+13:00

Mr. Buggy Bug Bug

2008-12-10T18:38:00.003+13:00

Collage on top of Bealey Spur.

2008-12-10T18:28:00.004+13:00

Jeremy/Anya medley.

2008-12-10T18:09:00.008+13:00

Light outside my flat

2008-12-10T18:03:00.009+13:00

Shoot 'Em Up, Dance Eden, and Mad Hot Ballroom

2008-09-01T22:52:00.006+12:00

Today I watched three films.

First, Mad Hot Ballroom directed by Marilyn Agrelo (US, 2004) was a cute documentary film about several school teams from Brooklyn and Manhattan competing to win a local dance competition. The film focuses on three schools in particular, of which one succeeds well enough to make it into the finals. The film was actually really nice, in that the school students - aged 10-11, i think - were actually really fun to watch. The competition served as the narrative for the film to center around, and was important, but I think the real focus of the film was simply watching the kids have a good time dancing. It was quite pleasant. The film also had a bit of fun interviewing the kids about their perceptions of life, their futures as individuals, their relationships - and future relationships - with the opposite sex, and their engagement with dancing. Bear in mind that at the start of the film these kids know about as much about ballroom dancing as I do, and they end up being really fun just to watch. It was also quite interesting to see the different teachers performing their duties as guardians of the future generations. There was one dance teacher and one form teacher for each class, and I thought there was one stand-out dance teacher (an unnamed glasses-wearing male), and one amazingly lovely form teacher (the young woman who cried at several instances). I personally couldn't help but get all jiggly in my film class, due to the idea of the dancing. Embarassing. boo. Anyway, it's shot as an direct cinema style of film, a la Patrick Wiseman's work; although - as with almost all direct cinema - it essentially fails to live up to the perfection demanded of its own criteria. Still, a lovely film, and worth a gander if you like the trailer. (wikipedia link here)

I'm not going to say much about Dance Eden mainly because i don't know you'd get access to it. It's a local production, made by one of my documentary cinema classmates, and it's an interesting investigation into the local dance cultures in dunedin. It examines classical Indian dance, hip-hop, Cook Islands dance, University dance practices, folk dancing, ceroc, capoeira (Rachel Rucksthul-Mann is even credited - nice work!) and Dr. Shona McTavish makes several appearances, among other sequences. It was a pretty good job for a first film, and works out pretty well. It took two years, and the person who made it (Katherine something-or-other) had no prior filming experience. Given that she did a bang-up job. The filming was good, and the interviews were solid. The only details - if one searches for problems... - would be the fact that a couple of the interviews could have been a bit better lit, and the environmental audio was distorted by the fact that a lot of the filming was done in large wooden halls, with the music coming out from a ghetto blaster. In other words, not really ideal studio sound. No trailers or other media, sorry.

Finally, Shoot 'em up by Michael Davis (US, 2007, starring Clive Owen) is probably the best action film I've seen in a while. I don't watch many action films, so don't hold me to anything here, but I thought it was an excellent genre-conscious film. It utilizes all the traditional tropes and iconographic methods of action films but does it in an effective deconstruction/reconstruction dialectic that works a hell of a lot better than Last Action Hero. Think something like what 28 Days Later for action films. All the action was ridiculous and awesome. I can't really do justice to the action using prose, but here's a teaser: in the opening minutes of the movie, the main protagonist stabs a carrot right through mouth and out the back of the skull of a minor henchman, presumably piercing his cerebellum, thus leading to his death. It was completely unexpected and totally freakin' awesome. I mean, I'm personally a vegetarian, and generally against the idea of reckless killing, and the tacit support that violent films generally have of this sort of stuff, but I guess that if I'm a vegetarian, then I'm totally for carrots, right? Anyway, I checked out Altman's Film/Genre, Stam's Film Theory, and Bordwell's Film Art, for a particular technical term, but I think what I'm looking for is probably in my copy of Hollywood Genres by Schatz (i think). Unfortunately, Al's got my copy in his room, and he went to bed 20 minutes ago. Dar. Anyway, what I think is that it has probably moved from the baroque period of action films (as exemplarized by films like Die Hard) but not developed into a hybrid genre film (like the sci-fi/action flicks the Matrix or Robocop, for instance) and has situated itself in the region of reflexive genre practice. I can't remember the actual name for this system and feel like I am insufficiently expressing myself (proving the semiologists right again) but my point is that I think Shoot 'Em Up is definitely one of the better action films I've seen in a while - which is, in and of itself, not much of a claim, given that many action films are somewhat unendearing and idiotic. The plot itself is just believable enough to allow you to watch the film without jarring you from your reverie too much, on the heavy-handed proviso that you've got to be prepared to ignore ideological processes at work, and simply sit back and watch the spectacle of the death of the body repeatedly enforced. I can't remember which theorist said it, but one feminist film critic described the male obsession with the climactic extinguishing of lives onscreen to be a form of projected sexual release, which would be fairly well supported in this film given the ham-fisted innuendos regarding the holy action movie trinity of penis-gun-ejaculate jokes. Indeed, the more I think about this film, the more mediocre it seems. I guess it's a fun ride, which you forget once you get off. (wiki entry)

Trailer:

Paranoid Park and The Promise

2008-08-31T13:51:00.011+12:00

I watch a lot of films, so i think it might be worth my while to start mentioning a few for others to know about, that way they can maybe watch them themselves if they're keen.

Last night, I had dinner with Al and Rachel. Those guys are great. We watched 1.3 films, Paranoid Park by Gus Van Sant (US, 2007), and The Promise by Chen Kiage (China, 2005) which was shit, yet comically memorable.

Paranoid Park is Gus Van Sant's latest film, and i enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not so much a story in which a character develops over time, so much as a character's history is revealed within the space of the film. It has a pretty simple concept - revolving around a teenaged skateboarder simultaneously attempting to deal with several problems in his life: his parents' divorce, his girlfriend's clinging nature, and his involvement in a tragic accident. Rather than having the skateboarder attempt to solve these problems, the film works to explain how the problems came about. There's no central problem/solution dialectic, and it doesn't attempt to give reasons for the events, and it's quite a meditative film. The back of the case described it as lyrical, and i suppose it is at that. It is also fairly poetic in its construction and montage. It has a fairly interesting sound-scape as well. Aside from at least two elliot Smith songs on the soundtrack, the majority of the film relies on diegetic environmental sound, or purely instrumental non-diegetic music. What is really interesting is how we engage in a form of sound-inspired flashback during the skateboarder's showering, which motivates our own memories of what has already happened in the film. There's no cut in the sequence, although there is a degree of change in the environmental lighting, but the sounds of birdsong and rain merge into the sounds of earlier occurrences in the film.

The Promise was the second film that we watched. It was shit. It was like Hercules meets China, only not as interesting as it sounds. Produced in China in 2005, The acting was alright, and the awful CG was just bad enough to be funny without being annoying (almost like Shaolin Soccer, but nowhere near as good), but the main problem i had with the film is how seriously it took itself. It was like an Edward D. Wood film. I just got sick of the saccharine levels of nauseating nationalism inherent in many Chinese films. I was expecting sweet-as martial arts, but all i got was some guy in red tin-foil hitting people with what looked like two beach balls on a rope. Inexplicably, this film was nominated for some golden globe awards - this is probably more indicative of the essentially political nature of award ceremonies than any real value in the film that i might be missing. I mean, considering how much material has been liberally 'borrowed' from other films, it's more like they're giving an award to a mixed montage of Xena, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, and Superman II. I mean, come on. Any film where the plot synopsis involves the phrase "by running so fast he reverses time and showed him the past" is clearly ripping off the Superman II film. Hahaha, he laughs, coldly. Think about this then: the chromatic register of this film juxtaposes such incredibly harsh primary colours that it's an effect that can be simulated to the regular layman simply by staring into the sun. Also, editing. I don't know who did the editing (EDIT: Max Wang: what an ass. Thanks IMDB) but it was pretty impossibly stupefying. Absurd jump cuts which serve only to undermine the reality of the film. Distracting, jarring re-framings which are worse than the jump cuts. Unmotivated scene changes that cause such a sense of locational vertigo that one cannot feasibly remain attached to an individual or environment. The whole film seems to be drawn out on the backs of their two-bit CGI effects - framing seems to pay no heed to the grammar of film editing if there's a superfluous piece of special effects that could be added instead. It would almost be avant garde in its construction if it weren't obvious that they're trying to be completely serious. The only reason I got as far as i did in this film is because it was one of those situations where you're not sure if you're enjoying the film as much as everyone around you, and you don't want to be the first to say "this is a preposterous piece of crap," in case you're the one not getting it. I think almost the sheer exercise in imbecilic film production is all that kept me going, and indeed, as i said to Al at the time, "i think this is what awesome looks like to a 12 year old."

Wikipedia links! Both contain spoilers. If you plan on watching Paranoid Park, I recommend not looking at the page.

Paranoid Park

The Promise

Trailers!

The Promise, China 2005, dir. Chen Kaige

Paranoid Park, US 2007, dir. Gus Van Sant

And there you have it. I finally updated my blog.

Eleanor Roosevelt

2008-07-13T09:39:00.003+12:00

You know who is totally awesome? Eleanor Roosevelt. Seriously, listen to some of her quotes:

"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."

Ha! Fantastic.

"A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water."

!!!!

"I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on."

What an awesome person. We need more Eleanor Roosevelts in politics these days. Unfortunately, the very same military-industrial complex that her husband warned of is probably the most responsible for the fact that individuals such as her are limited in their contact with the broader social environment.

Anyway, links for more of her quotes are here:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt

And links to her article on wikipedia is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt

Seriously, check out how nice she looks!

hiatus

2008-07-11T09:26:00.000+12:00

Okay, so the second hiatus was unintentional, but i notice that it's been exactly one month since I last posted. Weird.

bands

2008-07-11T09:21:00.002+12:00

okay, so i'm half-heartedly operating as a band manager for your favourite local folkwits: the Alan Ibell Band. It sounds a lot more important than it actually is. Basically, I can't do much for the guys other than actually walk down to the venue and say "we want a gig", but admittedly, doing that was more than they'd managed to do themselves. I think I act as a sort of external menomic device for them to remind themselves to do things, because hell, they've done most of it themselves. Honestly, the rest of what I've done has been usless and ineffectual, and I'd describe the effectiveness all activities thus far as similar engaging in the act of herding cats.

Anyway, you should come to the gig: Circadian Rhythm, 9pm, Saturday 19th of July.

mr. harwood

2008-06-11T08:31:00.002+12:00

For those of you not in the know, Stu has set himself up with a semi-professional blog for his music shizzle. find it here.

morning!

2008-06-07T07:01:00.002+12:00

kia ora. It's like, 7am, and I've been awake since.... yesterday morning. Gods. Pretty tired, but I can't sleep at the moment for some reason. I've been having some pretty weird pre-nightmares rushing through my head which are preventing me from actually falling asleep. Urf. Either way, I've had a chance to write a little more. I'm really tired, so I'll have to censor this in the morning.... so here goes:

Actually, fuck it. I'm going to bed.

revelation

2008-05-31T11:55:00.002+12:00

the revelation for today is that my computer monitor sucks. The colour in it is completely different from every other monitor that I look at my photos on, so as you can imagine, it's a real pain trying to get balancing correct for online photos. What's going to happen is that I'm going to go and get a monitor off Stu at some point. He has an LCD monitor that he doesn't need anymore after that, so hopefully the photos start looking a bit better soon. Also, I'm actually just going to go and pick up the camera from dad. It's been ages, so I'm going to walk all the way to his place to pick it up. It'll be sweet.

my sister

2008-05-30T09:55:00.003+12:00

My sister, Anna, is a really awesome person. She has a set of photos that you can see on flickr at this link.

You can see her in her youth in the photo in the previous post, but an updated appearance of her is here.

She's the one on the right, I think.

EDIT: Fixed the links so they actually work....

me and anna

2008-05-19T23:22:00.003+12:00

hi guys. the camera's still not back in my possession, so the blog is still technically on hiatus, but I can at least upload old photographs, right? I'm going to be hard pressed to find photos of me that are older than this, but here goes:

It looks a bit weird, in so much as I have a particularly munted expression on my face, but as Anna said, it's a cool t-shirt.

morning!

2008-05-17T07:37:00.003+12:00

Hey guys! Just a quick update post to let you know that the blog is going on hiatus for a wee bit. My dad has requested his camera back, and I had to oblige. I'll get it back some time in the future. Hopefully it's just a matter of days, as opposed to weeks....

Anyway, it's 7.36 in the morning, on a Saturday... Why am I up? I'll tell you: I'm going down to rialto to help the Tweeks film their next music video. It's all good, except for the fact that I still have a belly full of wine at the moment. Slightly unpleasant. I've also got the most amazing bed-hair you'll ever see, but without a proper camera, you won't be able to see it! Boooo.

Anyway, Anthony is picking me up in about -2 minutes, so I should probably make sure I'm ready.
Byeeeee!

photo issues

2008-05-11T23:43:00.001+12:00

I've been looking at this blog on a few different computers, and I'm starting to realise exactly how different the images look on other computers. Basically the problem is that my computer monitor doesn't provide a very accurate representation of white, let alone the other colours. Basically, this means that when I'm fixing up the photos, they end up looking fine on my old CRT monitor, but this doesn't actually represent how I actually want the photos to look on other computers. I guess this is just a warning about how my computer operates with regards to the images you guys are seeing...

play, tobias

2008-05-10T20:34:00.003+12:00

Tobias, an old member of the flat I currently live in, returned to town this weekend to graduate. He's a Law student, and a really smart guy, so I think he's probably done well. Anyway, I took the opportunity to take some photos of him. The other photos are just me playing around with a long exposure at night in a moving vehicle. I was in the vehicle with my mother, having just had a very pleasant dinner with her. I went to a play afterwards called Like someone in love, and it was a biographical play about the life of chet baker. It was very good, I thought, and was actually one of the best plays i have ever been to. The play is touring New Zealand, and hopes to go over to Australia. It's a solo performance, and only 50 minutes long, but also includes Jazz music and awesome acting. If you see it come to your town, it would be worth considering going to it, if it wasn't too expensive.

Awesome lightning storm photo

2008-05-10T20:23:00.003+12:00

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/05/08/eye-candy-chilean-volcanic-thunderstorm/

Some time ago, my father had a graduate student from Berkeley come over and do some degree of research on fossil whales for what I think is his PhD. His name is Nick Pyenson, and he was pretty cool. Apparently New Zealand provides for some very interesting evolutionary research on fossil whales, as there was a very sudden growth in diversity amongst whales in the sea around New Zealand several tens of millions of years ago, and, as such, the fossils that my dad has collected have hopefully provided Nick with a bunch of very useful information for his research. Anyway, I've shamelessly taken this link from him, as he left it up on his gmail chat thingee for a wee while. Enjoy!

things, not stuff

2008-05-10T04:10:00.004+12:00

Here's some early morning photos for you guys. These ones are just from me on my balcony, trying to see how bad the spots are on my camera. I'm not going to notate these ones, as they are just things, not stuff.

film stuff

2008-05-10T04:01:00.005+12:00

Okay, so it's... 4am. I'm at home typing this because I'm quite awake. Lei helped me to spill a glass of champagne on myself by distracting me with riveting conversation whilst I was reaching for the champagne flute. After that, I sort of just felt like going home. But yeah, here's where it's at, yo.

One of my department's important people, Professor Hilary Radner, has asked me to take a class on film editing techniques for a third year class. Exciting! But also terrifying. Don't tell the others. They either hear it from me, or from this blog. Either way, I should be able to do it. I'm going to spend this weekend playing with iMovie, just so I know what I'm teaching them. I plan on doing a mock-up assessment with a photo I took, provided the participants aren't too concerned. There's still 3-4 months to go, but the photo I want to use is this one.

Lei, Liz, tell me if you don't want me to use this one. I can edit this post to compensate as well...

crap

2008-05-07T17:00:00.003+12:00

Okay, just so you know, I'm trying to re-size my future images. This way, when you click on them, they're not so absurdly huge that you can't really take in the image. I'm not really sure how I can do this for all the photos that I've already uploaded without uploading all of them all over again, but I'm sure there's a way... I just don't know what it is yet.

misc photos

2008-05-07T16:26:00.005+12:00

I've just started to notice that there's a bit of shit on the lens, or inside the body of the camera. It's in most of the photos, mid-way up the right-hand side of the camera. It's really irritating now that I've noticed it... I'll have to get it fixed.

There are some photos here that I haven't posted yet, but I'm posting because I'm almost out of images to use. I plan on taking some more photos tonight, but we'll see if that works. I'm pretty pissy about the blot on the lens, so I'm not sure if I'll take anything worth keeping.

1) my street: Leith Street!
2) outside everyday gourmet, with Niki and Aaron
3) UBS
4) more glasses!
5) a fairly old photo of Lei and myself hanging out on the road between Christchurch and Arthur's pass. Taken with my old point-and-click camera.

quick update

2008-05-07T11:27:00.002+12:00

Just a quick update before I go and write more on computer games....

1) parking garage, Niki at the forefront. Nice colours in this shot. I think I was getting quite irritatingly camera-y at this point...

2+3) Car, driving past. I was just trying to get the technique working, and it sort of did, but sort of failed too.

4) steps in the polytech car park, from the photo expedition the other day.

5) Kavanagh Church tower.

the opera, the library, and the cultural elite

2008-05-05T19:42:00.002+12:00

I went to the opera the other day. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Robbie you've changed! You were never a cultured individual! Why this sudden interest in a musical form that influences the populist zeitgeist so little?" Well, I'll tell you: the ticket was free, and it was a colleague performing for a charity. It was a fine affair. I don't find opera to be much different from any other media form. It's pretty formally structured to be fair, and I enjoyed the musical accompanist. But it would seem that whether you're sitting watching Neighbours, or watching an opera by Mozart, you're still interested in how Mike cheated on Fran, and Fran's brother Craig is going to go and beat Mike up. Mike gets stabbed with a spear, and then has a bit of a whinge about being beaten up, while his sister Laurel bitches Fran out. Fran socks Craig, Craig cries, Laurel comforts Craig, and Fran and Mike congratulated each other on a job well done. Mike inherits a kingdom, and Fran wins the lottery. Craig invests in a lucky race horse, while Laurel founds a successful website design company. Everything is great, and the crowd laughs at the funny expressions on the singer's faces, whilst congratulating themselves on their elite position in society. So, yeah, it's sort of like that, only in Italian, and they interrupt the performances in order to mangle Italian family names at you, and attempt to explain what's going on.

The photos are:
1) The maternity ward of the hospital, I think. I'm not sure, as I don't think I've been in there in the last 24 years. VideoEzy is also peeking out from the bushes.
2) Jeremy, pulling faces at the opera. He was quite the hungover little tyke.
3) Garbage, photographed while we attempted to leave a carpark. Leaving was a lot more difficult than it sounds...
4+5) Shots of the library, which I study in. I worked here for 4 years as well, prior to working at the bookshop. I'm in there at the moment, typing this, as a form of procrastination from my dissertation. I should really get on to that - I'd like to have another 2000 words over the next two days. Should be okay, except for the fact that 90% is so badly written that I stress out thinking about it.

subversion.

2008-05-05T12:25:00.004+12:00

I have just finished reading this article: "How can a game be subversive?"

It raises some interesting points.

What is subversion, when it is in the realm of a videogame?

Is it the individual operating the game in a fashion contrary to its intended purpose, a la Paul Virillio's technological accident? By cheating, hacking, or patching a game, am I subverting it? I think not. By cheating, we are only re-reading the text in a more directly post-structuralist manner than before. If the author is dead, as Barthes says, then the application of a cheat or a hack is no more significant than adding punctuation to a book, reading the Cliff's Notes, highlighting a passage, or even mocking the text, as they did so often in Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The text, in its original format is almost guaranteed its permanence by having other texts (in the form of patches etc.) reliant on it for meaning. Utilizing in-built cheats is purely utilizing an element inherent in the game, put there by a programmer. Indeed, it is comparable to reading a glossary, or appendix, in order to coherently understand a text. Distributing such a hack or patch, would be different. That would be subversive. I'm having trouble though, as I don't have a definition of subversion that I can rely upon. I'm using a truthism: I'm thinking with my gut. Either way, so far, I've only addressed the concept of subverting a text, not subverting society.

What about the text itself, what about the manner in which it is constructed by the nebulous authors of the game, and what about my dissertation topic then? Is Heather from Silent Hill 3 subversive? In some fashion, my argument for my dissertation relies on it. Heather is so wildly different from prior succesful digitised female avatar stereotypes that I consider her to be subversive. We haven't had many "narrated" characters present in videogaming that share aspects of Heather. She's a tomboy, she's wearing clothing that removes any shape from her figure, aside from her face and her voice she has very few aspects of sexual dimorphism present. Even the fact that she has short hair is subversive - most of the other "narrated" female game protagonists have long-haired, leggy, buxom, Lara Croft characters. But here's the crux: Lara was originally subversive, but, like every element in the capitalist circuit, was appropriated en masse by corporate interest once it was realised that female characters sell games. Heather, although nominally, is at risk of becoming another stereotype, and is in fact evidenced as a stereotype by characters such as Alex from Half-Life, the PC from Portal (both games by Valve, incidentally), and a few others that escape me for now. Either way, these are characters that are now starting to appear in Hollywood films as major characters. A conglomerate character, formed partially of Heather and some other individuals from the Silent Hill games was the protagonist for the Silent Hill movie. There are many other exceptions, I'm sure. But still...

Where does the onus of subversion lie? Is it a readerly subversion, is the reader culpable for any deviation from preferred reading of the text? Is it societal, where the reader of the text is made to ask, why must I act in this fashion? Perhaps it is in the secondary producers - those that produce content to modify the game after the fact. I would say it is the societal option. A person takes on board their own person ethics, and opposes external oppression which coerces them to act in a particular manner.

games

2008-05-05T09:35:00.003+12:00

as some of you might know, I play the occasional videogame... hahaha! Yep.

Anyway, here are a few of my favourites at the moment:

Sweet, sweet dolphin olympics 2. It's like the tony hawk games, except you're a dolphin. dolphin!!!

Boxhead: The zombie wars. Shoot zombies in a big environment. I like the art aesthetic.

N. It stands for 'ninja', or more specifically, 'way of the ninja'. This is just a link to the wikipedia article about it, which links to a further few sites where you can download it.

IQ Challenge. A game where you have to work out how to get the cows into the right locations. A little buggy, but quite fun.

early morning coffee assisted reflexive blather

2008-05-05T02:11:00.001+12:00

So far, all the photos in this blog have been taken by hand, i.e. without a tripod. I've been managing to keep fairly still so far, but it's not a perfect system, and a lot of the photos are ruined by the fact that the higher-resolution photos are actually a lot blurrier than the thumbnails. I'm working on my steady hands, but it's not helped by the fact that most of my photography is taking place at night, or in low-light conditions. Combined with the fact that I don't like the flash on my camera as it's too strong, with no effective method of diffusion, then it gets a bit tricky. I'll work on it, and get back to you as soon as I can get some good material.

Also, I'm not superb with the digital editing software that I've got on this computer. At the moment, it's just an automated process, and it sort of takes care of everything without teaching me anything along the way. I had photoshop, but now I don't, and I don't even remember how to use it, so yeah... Anyway, I'm enjoying this photography thing so far. Hopefully it will keep going fine.

Finally, it's taking a good 15-20 minutes to upload each post's photos. God knows why, but I'm guessing it's the rampant abuse of our pathetic internet connection. It's not so fast, although it has capacity. Unfortunately, what speed we have is split between 4 people. It's sort of like the child of the divorced parents who are all complaining about seeing their child, only now instead of two, there's four legally appointed guardians, all staking their claim. I think I have to be a bit calmer about it and realise that the others need the internet as much as I do, even though it would be nice to have a better connection. Regardless, I sit here stressing as the photos upload hoping the connection doesn't fail, before I start to feel really tense and have to go and have a shower, go for a walk, or plain just go to bed, as it gets a bit too much sitting here panicking about it all...

...There's a few photos in the works that are alright-looking tripod numbers, so just keep your hats on, okay?

niki and aaron

2008-05-05T00:36:00.004+12:00

On Saturday I went and had korean with Aaron and Niki. You can see a mask from this event in a photo in an earlier post on this blog. I continued to take a few more photos that day. First, Aaron, dark against the outside world. Second, Niki and Aaron looking contemplative. Third, Aaron and Niki smoking outside UBS. Fourth, Aaron, under the duress of many photographs, begins to look like Allakariallak from Nanook of the North. Finally, a park bench, across the road from UBS.

Very pleasant.

more kavanagh

2008-05-05T00:03:00.000+12:00

Here are some more shots over kavanagh. I don't actually think I'm spelling that right, but I'm not too bothered. The only people who it really matters to know what I mean anyway...

I've become quite a fan of the underexposed environmental photograph. It's something that tends to blend the image of objects on the ground as separate from the sky, and as you might have noticed, I'm quite a fan of the skyline shot. I think, when the ground blurs into one big, dark, grey machine, versus a somewhat subtly shaded sky, then it implicates a quite interesting dynamic. Part of this is because I've only had my camera a wee while, and not really gotten used to the techniques required to be a good photographer, and I'm only just beginning to re-learn the techniques I'd sussed out when I was younger, but I do think it looks interesting.

Photo expedition

2008-05-04T22:59:00.002+12:00

I can't remember the date exactly, but about two weeks ago me, Lei, and Liz went on a photography expedition, and photographed some of the polytechnic carpark up near Kavanagh collegiate. That's where the first photo is from. The subsequent images are all taken in Kavanagh college itself. Also, I apologise profusely for the somewhat internet-skank appearance of myself in my previous post. It's kind of hard to take a photo of oneself, smile, and get the lighting right. It was even harder to photograph my glasses, as I couldn't see without the glasses themselves... ironic, no? Alanis could write a song about that.

Lei's photo from this expedition.

Liz's expedition photos.

new glasses

2008-05-04T02:12:00.009+12:00

This post is for those of you who, for one reason or another have been unavailable when I've gone to see you, or are presently out of town, and thus have been unable to see my new 'specs.

I like the term 'spectacles' mainly because it takes on a different meaning in media studies. (Mad props, Guy Debord).

Here you can see two (!!!) different pictures of me wearing my new glasses, and also a picture of my glasses, and then a picture through my glasses. Now who says I don't spoil you guys? Hahaha!

Saturday, addendum

2008-05-03T18:19:00.005+12:00

Okay, it's time for the early evening study avoidance post! Today, we have... sky! It's amazing! But also, we have a photo of a detail of a Korean wall display from inside the lovely restaurant Korea House. It's quite nice there. I recommend the kimchi pancake, and the spicy rice-cake with noodles.

Which brings me to my next point: it's interesting that so many dishes are described not as a solitary noun, but rather as a summation of the ingredients that combine to make them. If you're at an Indian restuarant, you're asking for Mattar Paneer, or Aloo Saag, or something like that, which literally translates to peas and cheese, or potatoes and spinnach. Weird eh? I mean, I understand why it has to be like this, as no one meal can always be cooked exactly the same, but it's kind of interesting that when we say "Stew" or "curry" or "burgers" (boigers!!!!) or whatever, that we're not really even describing the food. It's like saying that you're going to the movies, but you can't be more specific than saying what genre of film you're going to serve up... But even so, it's like the platonic ideal of the food provides just enough information to let people know what they're probably going to have. I'd like to go somewhere where all you're allowed to say are phrases lacking negative qualifiers, that describe which sorts of food you don't want, and then the chef serves you up with some random crap.

for example:

Waiter: "And what would sir like for his evening meal?"

Male Customer: "I shall not be having the fisherman's salad, and my friend wouldn't like to have the foie gras, whilst the lady will be avoiding the Thorramatur buffet"

Waiter: "Excellent, I shall inform the chef."

Customers: chatting ensues

Waiter returns carrying a calculator served in soda water, a bust of Mozart made of TVP and roasted, and a fruit pizza, all of which is rapidly consumed.

Waiter: "I hope everyone enjoyed their meals, sir," [rolls a handful of dice] "that will be $19.90, plus $11 corkage."

See, it would be wonderful! You could call it the Kafka-terium, or the Derrida-cessan, or even just the Pearsean Conundrum, or something.

Sky, people.

2008-05-03T13:25:00.003+12:00

Here are some of the skyline photos that I mentioned in my earlier posts. These ones are from right outside my flat. Also included are photos of Alex, putting tape on a pile of boxes of his, prior to leaving our flat, as well as a photo of Anthea with crazy-face, and Dave with the crazy-eyes-to-the-max

Early morning addendum

2008-05-02T00:12:00.000+12:00

I thought I'd be crazy, and add another post tonight. This way, I don't feel like I'm shirking my duties by not posting between now and Saturday. I've had some requests for more photos of my paternal progenitor, so I've got one here of him on the phone at my parents' place. The other three are photos of the mountains in Arthur's Pass from the Waimakariri Valley river bed (spelling.... ?). I know that the first one is Mount Bruce, which is an appropriately strapping name for a masculine Australian, and also suitably describes the brutish success I felt after I'd climbed it. The others I'm less familiar with, in terms of nomenclature, despite having spend years practically learning the names by rote at the hand of my aforementioned father.

Also, this is pretty much the last of the photos that aren't from Dunedin city itself. I've run out of all my good photos from around Arthur's pass, and the only other interesting archive photos that I've got are from a photography trip around the schools of Dunedin with my friends last weekend. After that, it's going to be Dunedin street photos all the way, which brings me to the point of this paragraph. It's hard to photograph street scenes in Dunedin, without ending up with an infinite number of phone poles, lights, and thingees... wires. That's it: wires, as in power lines. I'm not saying that they necessarily ruin a photo, and it is possible to utilize them in an aesthetic framing manner, but I'm just saying it's annoying that they're almost always in the photo. I'm not a particularly great amateur photographer, and as such, I'm not good enough to be able to exclude lines, wires, poles, and lights from my photos when I want to. So, be prepared, in the future there's going to be a whole lot more "industrial chic" in my photos, if only because I can't get them off the skyline.

fences, gates... foucauldian eductional control

2008-05-01T23:14:00.006+12:00

I'll be honest: I take a lot of night photos. Why? Well, mainly because I work and study during the day, and when I get home, it's usually about 10-11pm. Thus, it's dark. If I'm lucky, I'll have the time to go out on the weekends with friends for a bit of a photo-shoot, and I was fortunate enough to do so last week with a couple of good mates: Liz and Lei. Shortly, I'll start uploading those photos, but in the meanwhile, I'm going to have to finish off the archive of good photos that I've taken that I think should be put on this blog. Bear in mind that I've already browsed through approximately 300 photos to bring you the ones that you see here, so you're not seeing the entirety of my photos, just the ones which I like most. Often the other ones have a flaw in the image (i.e. too blurry, underexposed or overexposed, or I've used a long exposure, but not held my hand still), or the image will contain something I think is cool, but not really cool enough to 'publish'. So, yeah. Here's some more photos. First is a fence in a school, taken on the same day as the other snow photos seen so far. Second is the view out my dad's office at university. Third is the gates to the aforementioned school.

There is an inherent, yet unintentional connection between the educational role of all these structures, Foucault's educational hierarchies of control, and Foucault's panopticon. This, intriguingly ties into the position of the camera, and my personal role as the camera operator. You'll notice that when you take photos of people, they will often complain, because they don't like the idea of being observed. Foucault says that this is because they feel that they must act in socially specific manners while being observed, and yet the social specifics of the camera asks the subject to 'act natural' - which is obviously a bit of a contradiction in terms. You can't both 'act natural', and conform to accepted standards at the same time. Another issue is Baudrilliard's discussion of the image of the self. Whenever you see a photo of yourself, that photo is of a moment in the past - no matter how soon you look at it, you never see 'now'. Thus, Baudrilliard says that, in being photographed, and in being conscious of the photo that will be, we are made conscious of the time that occurs between these moments and our previous images of ourseleves, and our observance of the image in the future. This heightened observance of the self in relation to time reminds us of our own mortality as we contemplate the infinitesimal degradation of our images and our bodies. There's also the fact that people never want a photo of themselves that isn't somehow adulterated to be something that they're not. They want to present a simulacra of themselves, due to the fear that the original will not stand the inspection of others, which ties both Foucault and Baudrilliard together in the photo. The irony is present most in the last photo, where the image of the school is gated by a monument to past students who died at war, and thus articulates the nation state's ability to consume the lives of its constituents through the violent state apparatus of honourable war. Of course, this isn't the case in all situations, and not the case for all people, or all images. It's just theory, and is abstract at best.

University office

2008-05-01T00:56:00.002+12:00

Today we have some photos from the camera just minutes after my dad returned it to me from being repaired. All the photos are from my dad's office at the University.

snow

2008-04-29T19:57:00.005+12:00

More photos! First is Sunrise in Dunedin, from Mornington. It's probably winter. I don't tend to make it up in the mornings for the summer sunrises. Second is my steamy bathroom from last year. The light coming through the steam looked really cool. It kind of comes out in this one. Third is snow.... not much to say about this one. The fourth is also snow, but is also a picture of my old flat, from a distance. My old flat is the one second from the right. Fifth is my lovely mother in her office at the library. I'm sure she wouldn't like it, as she rarely likes photos of herself, but she should rest assured knowing that I think it is a lovely photo. Also, everyone (or at least, those of us in Anguilla, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, St. Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Switzerland, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, or Zimbabwe) should remember that it is mother's day on the 11th of May (second Sunday in May), which is in about two weeks. Score +1 for the double parentheses in a sentence!

grandfather photo

2008-04-28T18:29:00.004+12:00

Hi again! Here are some more photos.
Included is a photo of my grandfather when he was my age. genetics being what they are, he looks almost exactly like me. The photo of the street is on the way to university from my flat last year. It was a long walk, and in fact, if you click on the picture, then university is about 1-2 kilometers from the white buildings in the center of the image. the photo of the moon i took whilst lying on my back early one saturday morning in Port Chalmers. I'd stayed the night at a friend's place and woken up about 9am, so i went for a walk and took photos. Very pleasant, but it makes me fear I am turning into my father. the plant is probably a native hebe, but I'm not certain. I'm not even sure if it was me that took the photo... it's sort of my style though (in so far as i can consider myself to have a style), so possibly.

skies

2008-04-27T01:13:00.005+12:00

Right! time for another update. This morning, first we have a sunset shot from alhambra park, taken some time in 2007, second is a photo of looking north from dunedin's Mt Cargill, and third is a photo of dunedin's night skyline taken in the early evening in 2006. I know they're not the best, but it's taking some work still. I think the second photo is my favourite, as it looks weirdly like a painting.

celebratory first post

2008-04-26T16:30:00.005+12:00

Late last year my computer crashed, and I lost all the photos that were stored on it as a result. Having not backed up any of it, I had to sort through all my archived emails and find the few ones that I had sent to other people. Here are some of my favourites from that lot. The first is out the window of my parents' holiday house in Arthur's Pass. The second is looking up in my bedroom from my bed of 2006. The final one is of my good friend Lei out the door of my flat in 2006. Anyway, welcome to the blog, and enjoy your stay!