Grumpy Girl

2002-10-31T08:39:00.000+10:00

Masters- link
Moving
Ok, I'm moving.
You can now find me at:
Invisible Shoebox.
Over and out.

2002-10-31T07:28:00.000+10:00

Diary
Too busy to blog
I'm moving blog address shortly, but not quite yet. I'm still pushing furniture around, but I'll post the link when it's done.

2002-10-30T07:50:00.000+10:00

Diary
Email from the top of my computer

A surprising email arrived today:

Dear GG-

I am the panda who sits on top of your computer, my left ear resting against the miniature world globe (covering The Maldives and part of Sri Lanka, in fact).

At night, when you and your collegues have left, I make my way down to your keyboard so I can surf on the internet. This is not an easy task-- there is no ladder to help me on my descent and having no digits (how I envy you your thumbs!), I often slip. Then, once I am down, it is difficult for me to turn on your monitor. I am thankful, however, that you do not turn the computer off entirely, as being so small (15 cm on last measuring) it would be impossible for me to clamber down to the hard drive button.

Typing is exhausting as I must jump from key to key, often quite firmly, as your keys tend to stick (would it be impolite for me to suggest a vigourous shaking of the keyboard one day to dislodge some of the bread crumbs?)

Why do I go to so much effort?
I think I realised about a year ago that it was unlikely that I am ever to see much of the world. This is not meant as a complaint. I love my work as your computer mascot, and never tire of the view our position on the third floor affords me over Fitzroy. But I have an inquisitive mind and wish to know what is going on beyond the re-inforced glass of our office window.

After catching up on world news, I read your blog. I feel that it has given me a deeper understanding of who you are, something beyond our work relationship.

And because I have gained this insight, I felt that it was only fair to let you know, seeming as we spend so much time together.

Unless you object, I shall continue to read it.

Sincerely,
Sun Arrow*

(*as you have never given me a name, I hope you will not mind too much that I have chosen one for myself. It is the name printed on my tag and I feel that it somehow belongs to me.)

I wrote back immediately:

Dear Sun Arrow,

I am flattered that you read my blog and happy for you to use my computer whenever you wish. In future I shall dangle my mouse cord across the edge of the screen so you can slide down much more easily. Will this help? I would leave the monitor on but I think it's probably bad for the computer.

The only thing I would ask is that you don't download too many large files as our ISP has a limit and if we exceed it we have to pay an excess.

Have you ever logged on to the panda cam at the San Diego zoo?

I'm sorry that I never gave you a name, but Sun Arrow is much more elegant than anything I would have thought of anyway.

regards,
GG

2002-10-30T07:38:00.000+10:00

Masters
Voice, more (Jill/txt)
I was reading this morning in Jill/txt of how she consciously developed a voice for her blog that is "grumpier" than in her usual writing and the thought occurred to me that perhaps what is going on is a reaction to the slightly stifled tone that most academic writing has. I clearly remember as a first year uni student getting an essay back and having the tutor say "I don't want to read about your opinion of the text. I want to know what other academics and critics have said about it." So I had to create a neutral, or at least the semblance of neutral, tone. I started to feel that the unsupported arguement was unworthy of consideration (and I still do, to a degree). If I had an opinion, it had to be spoken through the critics or the texts I chose to quote. I steered away from the first person.

And it strikes me now that this is what initially made me a bit nervous about blogging, as it is a collection of personal reactions to things, heavy on the "I". I think it is also something that puts me off some blogs- especially the news-centric ones or the war-blogs. They often seem to be the unsubstantiated rantings of bigoted minds and I have no time for that. However, I do like the first person narrative of the blog in general, so I guess it becomes a weighing up of rant and reason.

2002-10-29T16:18:00.000+10:00

Masters- link
Voice (Jill/txt)
Lots of useful stuff on Jill Walker's site today. I'm particularly interested in what she says about going back and adjusting a post later on in the same day. I do this, but always feel slightly guilty about it, as if I'm somehow missing the point of keeping a weblog. However, as Jill points out, it is still public writing, it just means you can make public amendments too.

Jill also has some think-making comments about voice and the process she has been through to develop a style that is her own. It's made me start thinking about the way blogs have of linking things up- themes that run through them, topics the writer comes back to, things that the readers pick up on. Everytime someone emails me with advice or thoughts on something I've written I'm struck by how useful this is as a forum for working out/refining what it is that I am doing.

All very good and project-related, for me.

2002-10-29T07:51:00.000+10:00

diary
Performance anxiety
I went to an opening at Gertrude St on Friday night which included:
an excellent triffid-like sculpture made out of beige plastic chairs in the front room
a wooden speaker system in Studio 12
and some videos of performance art playing in the main room.

I watched the videos for some time- simultaneously appalled and fascinated (as was intended).
First I watched (through my fingers) as Mike Parr systematically sliced his fingers, burnt his legs and generally dripped lots of blood around.
Then the video changed to a later clip where a guy (not sure who) was pouring chocolate and honey over a group of naked people and then licking it off them.

Afterwards, Masato and I were laughing about what the noticeboards in the art schools must have looked like, once upon a time, in more viscercal times:

Room 412. Self mutilation tutorial. Pls bring your own pen knife and bandaids.

Room 37. Honey pouring workshop. Remember that this workshop counts towards your assessment. Non attendees will fail. 2nd year students may bring treacle if they prefer.

2002-10-29T07:36:00.000+10:00

masters- link
Vocal
An email from Boynton this morning in reply to the post yesterday about Voice. New to blogs, but a writer for theatre, Boynton writes:

I've never heard of actors going for a "neutral" voice - to me any sort of neutrality implies a diminishing of self. A sort of blanc mange and don't we know there's too much of that commodity out there already!Perhaps it's just a shorthand term used to mean "smaller' or other techie compromises? I have a feeling that if you score more readers, you're doing something right. It is the lure of that voice that has got them in, and struck a chord. To look over your shoulder, and tone up or down to fit the imaginary demographic as she grows is a rather dangerous impulse. The concept of 'which voice to use' is complex however.

She mentions also the freedom that comes with writing under a pseudonym, the creation of a character. However, as she points out, this may end up being restrictive. What happens if the hard-nosed character you've constructed wants to react to something in a sentimental way? Is it ok to suddenly change? This is what I found with Grumpy Girl- I used the character as a way of distancing myself from my blog, but eventually (inevitably?) we started to merge. Whether or not this is a good thing I have yet to decide.

2002-10-28T16:20:00.000+10:00

masters- link
What's New Pussycat?
Came across this blog today and it made me laugh.
I particularly like the entry for October 12 (Dawson's Beak).
I also like that she says she eats her lasagne from the bottom up, so as to save the cheesy bit until the end.
It makes me feel better about the (admittedly disgusting) way I eat pizza- scrape all the topping off then eat the base.

2002-10-28T14:07:00.000+10:00

masters- link
The sound of your own voice(s)
Two interesting emails this morning, one from Jill Walker and one from Mark, (whose URL I entirely concur with). In both emails the issue of "voice" came up. Mark mentioned that actors refer to a "neutral" voice- "an accent that is not one thing or another".

He asked "Do you think that you have to develop a neutral sort of writing accent, the more people you are writing for?"
It's an interesting question.
Dunno.
Dunno if it's possible.
Can you remove yourself enough from your writing to attain this neutral state?

It reminds me of what Thieu was telling me about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (if I've understood it correctly) about how it is impossible to measure something entirely accurately because the act of measuring will inevitably have some effect on the results (that is, there is no neutral when we measure something.)
Hmm.
This is probably not what it means at all.
Dodgy art student trying to talk physics....

The thing that you often seem to get told when struggling over creative endeavours is "be yourself". I've yet to work out which of the many selves I have is the one I should be. Whichever one it is should probably be keeping the blog.

Jill mentioned that she has yet to successfully transpose pieces of writing from her weblog into longer pieces, although she had tried on a number of occasions. It seemed, she said, that the pieces worked best in the weblog format and did not really work so well once removed from that context. Interesting... However, Jill does use the weblog to collect pieces and ideas for articles or papers, which would fit with the shoebox/scrapbook thinking I'm doing.

2002-10-28T13:52:00.000+10:00

masters- link
web boom over
Apparently there is a decline in Australian web users.
The reasons?
-stricter rules on music copyright and downloads
-more difficult these days to download porn.
-crash of One.Tel
etc

2002-10-26T16:17:00.000+10:00

diary
comic

2002-10-25T08:54:00.000+10:00

diary

secret blog entry.

2002-10-25T08:39:00.000+10:00

masters
Naughty Blogger
I did do blogger entries yesterday but for some reason blogger chose to with hold them from the world.
Went in to RMIT- proposals are due in or there is a chance of being placed "at risk" which sounds simply awful.
I have quite a bit on at work at the moment- the new part of the site is going up on Nov 8th and I'm thinking I probably won't get my proposal written up before then.

I also really need to think about what it is that I want to do with it. It has changed considerably since this time last year when I first started thinking about it. I think originally I wanted to make a finished, resolved piece- a multi-media diary of some sort. The blog was really going to only be a way of tracking my progress. Some how the blog has taken over. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it does make me a little nervous. Can I really base a masters on a piece of free software? I tell myself that this is perfectly acceptable- the popularity of aps like Blogger and Moveable Type would suggest that there is something there to be explored.

I'm now more thinking that I want to create a series of small pieces and experiments. I think in the back of my mind there is the hope that the weblog could become a resource for larger, more fleshed out pieces (the shoebox/ scrapbook model) but this means, realistically, that I should probably aim to create a few more fleshed out pieces to test if this is how they could function.

I think also that I want to have a question that looks at the creation of a "self" in a weblog- that narrative voice thing, the strange relationship that must emerge for some webloggers that positions the author somewhere between fame and anonymity.

And in some way I'd also like to look at the "diary rings" that emerge with weblogging. It's interesting, I think, to notice that webloggers tend to link to other webloggers that they know personally. And the webloggers in Melbourne that I have spoken to seem to at least be very aware of other Melbourne webloggers. It's funny that even though the internet means you can have exactly the same relationship with a weblogger in the US as you might have with someone else in Australia, there seems to be a strong sense of local ties.

2002-10-24T08:46:00.000+10:00

masters
Temporiser
Another quote from Modjeska's Timepieces which caught my attention as I think it describes the mindset of many a diarist:

I think I'm a temporiser. It's a term Andre Aciman uses of himself, and of a certain sort of memorist, of whom the greatest- the incomparable- exampe, is Proust. Temporising, in Aicman's view, is an attitude of mind which develops in certain people who can find themselves engulfed, even tipped off balance, by the sadness of the present. The incurable imperfection in the very essence of the present, Proust says..... they slip into other time frames; in other words they play with time. They propel themselves into wishful thinking, fantasising, all kinds of story telling, as a way of coaxing life into more controllable possibilities. They return to a troubled present once it has passed and reconsider it from a safer vantage point. A life of imagination, lived on the page, takes on a reality that can be a powerful as the reality their body inhabits.

It goes on, but I'll stop there. It interests me, this idea of not being able to think of the present while the present is happening, but choosing to leap, cat-like, into a tree while the paint of today dries. Writing a journal allows you to fix the details that were not quite right as they were happening, and to scrub out the things you do not want to think about. It makes me think that the process of diary-writing is as much about the things you want to forget as it is about the things you want to remember.

2002-10-24T08:33:00.000+10:00

Masters
Masters class
A Masters proposal-writing session tonight and I am scared. Scared because I have a lot of work to do to get my proposal into line. Scared because I know it has diverted dramatically from my original intent. And scared because everybody else always seems so much more on top of their masters than I am.

2002-10-24T08:31:00.000+10:00

Diary
The Feet
Petite and I rang The Feet last night. An incredibly clear line made it hard to believe they were in the Enchanted Tower in Borneo and not still in Albert Park. It was good to speak to them. I love the emails and I am right on board with the blog, but hearing a voice is very reassuring. They said it has been very difficult to get up to date news- they didn't hear about Bali until the Monday morning, where it appeared in a scrolling text banner at the bottom of the tv financial news. Right Foot said "I think it said 16 people have been killed" and Left Foot said "I think it actually said 216."

Petite is back from Sydney at last, although she will probably be going up there a lot. It's good when she's back. I've realised that for all my reclusive ways I actually rather like having people around.

2002-10-23T08:52:00.000+10:00

Masters- link
Accessibility and moral responsibility
This article from News.com reports on a ruling that Southwest Airlines does not have to make its website more accessible to the blind. And it worries me.

Accessibility is of great concern when it comes to the web and I'm sure that I have been guilty many times over of making sites that pose difficulties for disabled users. But one thing that struck me about the case in Australia when Bruce McGuire sued SOCOG for having a inaccessible website was that the things that he requested were very simple. Things like putting ALT tags on images so that his screen reader could tell him what they were, especially if the images then acted as links to other pages. And it seems that this is the case with the Southwest Airlines case too.
Which is pitiful.
It is so easy to put on ALT tags and it is common politeness. To refuse to do it is pathetic and petty. It's like already having a ramp to place over stairs to enable wheelchair access to a building but refusing to do it because you don't feel like it.

The reaction amongst designers when it comes to accessibility is often "It's just ridiculous, this is a visual medium, we'll have to build an entirely separate website to accomodate special needs." But this kind of view, I am now thinking, borders on bigotry.

It's made worse by the fact that the web is potentially an invaluable tool for someone with a disability who might find getting around more of a hassle than able-bodied people. It makes me sigh to think that an airline is not prepared to make the changes necessary to help their blind or in other ways impaired customers use their website to book tickets when clearly, this would be a useful thing. It shouldn't be so much an issue of "Why should we have to do this?" as "We want to do this." And it would be easy to do the things that have been asked. It would take a designer (or the work-experience kid or the boss' kid) a few hours at most to put on the ALT tags to make those sites accessible, without requiring any additional design or hassle. Refusal to do so comes down to pig-headedness and laziness.

(ps you might note that I don't have an ALT tag on my GG header, but this is because I've yet to work out how to do it in Blogger. Ok and because I'm lazy. But I'm going to fix it, I swear.)

2002-10-23T08:36:00.000+10:00

Masters
Whine Online
All over hip hooray. It was fine, and I came in under time at 4 minutes with no questions (largely because, I suspect, no one really had any idea what it is that I am doing.) I did have a moment of panic, however. I was sitting there smugly with my zip drive, practically looking forward to displaying my new found Power Point skills ("the refuge of scoundrels and middle management" as PM wisely observed this morning) when it dawned on me that there was no zip drive attached to the machine. No zip drive, no pc versions, no internet connection, and this, a multi-media course, but enough of that. I dashed up to AIM, displaying a remarkable degree of calmness and Sensai burned the files onto cd for me. Talk was fine, I passed (which is much better than the other option, fail). Oh well, I'm glad it's finished but I'm sorry at the way it all turned out. It's a bit of a shame as It could have been a really interesting course if the online component had actually happened, but instead it was largely a waste of time.

2002-10-22T08:49:00.000+10:00

Masters
Talkety
Got to give the second talk for the Methodology Research class today. I'm not nervous, but I'll be glad when it's done. I've made myself a cheesy little Powerpoint presentation over the weekend and somehow managed to resist animating all the text (it was a struggle.) I'm hoping I'll get in first like I did last time, but I think there are a number of us presenting today, so it's probably unlikely.

2002-10-22T08:35:00.000+10:00

diary
World gone mad etc
It was Jane who broke the news. Her brother called her and she came over to tell us straight away.
"Do any of you know anyone studying at Monash? Someone has opened fire on a classroom in the Menzies building. A couple of people are dead and there are a number of people wounded."
We look blankly at each other. None of us know anyone studying there, but it's still a shock.
"The world's gone mad" I say.
Yes.
Dr Bob walks in the room.
"Have you heard the news from Monash? The world's gone mad."
We nod and agree.
Mad.

In the evening I go into RMIT. We discuss the shootings and shake our heads.
"The world's gone mad" I say, as I haven't said it here yet.
La S looks at me. "That's exactly what I said this morning" she says, "But then, probably a lot of people have said that today."

This morning Thieu walked in with me. In between admiring the new leaves and pondering why it is that the elms seem to take so much longer than the other trees to come into foliage, we talk about the sniper in Washington and then, inevitably, the shootings at Monash.

Thew looks at me. I know what he's going to say, but I wait.
"The world's gone mad, Merri" he says and I have to agree.

2002-10-21T08:41:00.000+10:00

diary
Recollection of a cancelled holiday
Yesterday, walking along I had a sudden memory that made me stop in the street and exclaim out loud. For all my rantings on Friday about never having had any desire to go to Bali I had completely forgotten that Shell and I once planned to go there and had even paid for part of the flight. It was a long time ago, so long ago that it was the onset of the Gulf war that stopped us going. There was parental concern about a fundamentalist backlash against Westerners. I remember at the time thinking that everyone was over-reacting as it was impossible to imagine this kind of thing happening in Bali. Strange that I'd completely forgotten about this.

2002-10-21T08:32:00.000+10:00

diary
Frontier Librarians
Petite and I have been a little fretful over the absent Feet this week. At first I wasn't concerned at all as they are in Malaysia and not Indonesia, but as the Government started issuing increasingly hysterical warnings for Australians to leave all of South East Asia, we started to wonder if they were safe. I suppose the concern is that they are not receiving all of the news and are therefore unable to make a truly informed decision. It has been made harder by not having a contact number for them.

However, this morning I received an email from The Left Foot and felt a little better, although I have sent off an email requesting a phone number. I think both Petite and I will feel better once we've actually heard their voices.

They have started working on The Frontier Librarian blog and it made me feel much more reassured once I'd read it. Somehow picturing my mother eating bananas (I was actually eating a banana as I read the banana-eating entry) made me feel like things were ok.

I am also concerned about Heighty in Cambodia, but I guess I have to be confident that the Australian Government would be very quick to bring her group back if they thought they were in danger.

2002-10-18T09:29:00.000+10:00

Masters- link
Clarice Beckett
I'm still reading Drusilla Modjeska's Timepieces and I read something the other day that clicked into my head as an interesting piece of information. I've always had a secret soft spot for the work of Clarice Beckett, with her soft, foggily indistinct canvases, always seeming to depict the early in the day or dusk. Her work was largely ignored during her life time, but she plodded on, determined and unfazed, holding yearly exhibitions and sticking to the theories taught to her by Max Meldrum.

Modjeska comments that Beckett did most of her paintings in the morning or in the evening because she had to fit her art time around her household chores. This seems so obvious now, but it had never occurred to me before that the times of day she depicted in her work was not because of an abiding interest in the effects of light, but because this was the only time available to her. Yet this sense of half-light is one of the most wonderful things about Beckett's work. It interesting, I think, to contemplate how limitations imposed on the creative process can actually end up influencing the work in a positive way.

2002-10-18T08:39:00.000+10:00

diary
Ian Henderson
Last night Thieu and I went to see Mogwai at the Prince of Wales on free RRR tickets won by Jas, who is the champion at winning things.

Before we went I watched the ABC news, which is still full of images from Kuta. It's a strange thing- I've never had any desire to go to Bali and I have always imagined Kuta beach to be a most hideous place, largely because of the Australians there, behaving like louts. I know that they would have made me shudder. Places like the Sari club would have appalled my delicate sensibilities also, with their (alleged) policy of excluding the locals. Imagine some bar in Melbourne that had a policy of keeping out Australians. Imagine the outrage.

So there's a lot about Kuta beach and that pissed-Australians-in-Asia scene which I loathe. Yet each night when I watch the news or read the paper it makes me cry.
The dad at the airport, who knows his son was ok, but "just wants to give him a hug to make sure he's really back."
The sad-faced photo in the Australian yesterday of the woman who'd lost her boyfriend juxtaposed with a picture of her with him earlier this year, looking at him like he was her world.

And then last night, another emotional story, probably more worthy of Today Tonight than the ABC news, telling the story of a young woman whose brother was missing. They showed her traipsing around putting up photos of him in the windows at the airport, like he was a lost puppy, like this could make a difference. It was too much. Her grief flawed me. It is impossible to watch that kind of pain and not think "That is me, if my sibling or parent or friend were lost. That would be my dad, waiting at the airport, knowing it was a pity silly, but needing the tangile evidence that you were ok." And it stopped mattering that I would have despised some of these people if I saw them in Bali, treating the locals like they were servants, or spending all day drinking and never leaving the confines of Kuta.

They cut back to Ian Henderson at the news desk and he was unable to speak. Or at least, this is how it seemed to me. There was a three second space of nothingness, just Ian staring ahead and, it seemed to me, composing himself, getting over it.

2002-10-17T09:05:00.000+10:00

diary
All My Elephants
An email from Jacinta led to me looking at Eun-ha Paek's site Milky Elephant. Weird, beautiful. I have no idea what's going on, but I love it.