Human 1.0 looks to the future (and the past)

         While reading the set text for my study subject, I find a term for which I don’t have a definition.  I go to the index to find an earlier instance of the word where it might be defined.  As I scan my eyes down each page instance of the word listed in the index, I find myself thinking that this find sweep is not very effective.  Then I remember that it is my own brain which is conducting the find.  It’s not very efficient and it’s slow.  I find the definition after about six minutes, but find myself comparing the effectiveness of my human searching of the pages of a book with the find function which I am used to using on my computer screen and coming up second best - and being frustrated by this.  Am I now entering a phase in my life where my need to existentially jack in and upgrade myself will become more and more apparent? Where my version 1.0 of myself is just incredibly out of date and incompatible with the software all around me? Am I suffering from a kind of usability envy of my own digital devices? As there was a secret gestural prehistory of mobile devices, am I now experiencing a prehistorical frustration in anticipation of my human integration with the digital? Am I yearning for cyborg status?

           Perhaps yearning is too strong a word. Will I look back on today and remember with yearning the days when simple word-processing and blogging were the extent of my content creation? Will I see this as a peaceful and uncluttered time, much as I now see the 1970’s as a golden age of being outside in the fresh air, doing one thing at a time, and not recording it or conveying my experience to someone somewhere else until I saw them later in person? Of relying on memory and of not worrying if the details were a bit fuzzy? Of using my hands to draw and write on paper? This nostalgia coupled with future yearning happens on a pinpoint axis of desire, intention and frustration.  Where I am in technological history depends upon what I want to do right now – in the sense of whether I am in the beginning, the middle or near the end of life as I have known it… and whether I judge this to be useful or frustrating.   This then colours how I see myself - am I using a technology, is the technology using me, or am I part of the technology, or am I the technology, and where do we overlap? Or am I on a continuum of use, as well as on an axis of usability? 

One thing I do know, I am running out of caffeine (and this issue probably won't change in the near future...)

Sea of memes at sea

We're sitting on the beach talking to old friends and drinking champagne. A chance to chill out and shoot the breeze.

Gone country

Last month I made a few trips to the country on the weekends. On one trip my dad put my name on the list at the country music club in my hometown. I got up and did three songs with the house band. The audience seemed to enjoy my effort and I was asked back to do a guest spot later in the year. A good weekend all round!

A nephew, a cold, an essay and a journey

It's been quite a week. Last Friday I became an auntie - my sister had a tiny little boy at 31 weeks.  Both are doing okay.  There is a picture above of the little fellow.

I was only able to meet him yesterday as I was really sick with bronchitis, which was frustrating. I'm now attempting to pack a bag and write most of an essay before heading off the the ALIA LibTech Conference in Perth, while playing scrabble on my phone with a friend who is writing a major report.

My partner now has a serious manflu, which is quite dramatic and all-encompassing, so I'm going to have to stop everything soon and get him some medicine. 

I must be feeling better today, as I'm multitasking again, which is comforting.  The whole week with the only doing one thing at once, and then barely doing the one thing, was a bit disconcerting.

Just before I got sick again (although throughout the month of August it was hard to tell where one illness stopped and another began), my partner and i were both home, making spaghetti, drinking red wine, and we ended up writing a whole song before dinner.  I live for these moments... I love that thing I heard Tom Waits say in an interview when someone asked him in an interview what came first, the music or the lyrics, and he replied, "the phone call". (Sorry, I have no idea when he said it).

Now to see if blogs are happening...

It's day #9 of blog every day of june & I really hope my mobile blogger is working...
Making some coffee & trying to keep warm watching a Happy Days rerun. It's about 9 degrees celsius.

Bloggy frustration

I've been trying to blog from the blogger app on my phone for a week or so and no joy. There were times when I had a few choice gems to say as well.... Frustrating! My little lifeless posts are living in my phone but can't get out, all waiting for the elusive day when they upload. If I'm not blogging from said phone, the simultaneous tweet is not, er, simultaneous, I guess. I'll try to sort myself out when I've had some beauty sleep for the brain...

My first essay in years

I've been writing my first essay for my degree this afternoon, and realising I've become a bit rusty at writing.  Also it has seemed easier to work out my thoughts on paper at times.  I guess this demonstrates my Gen X mixture of digital vs analogue thinking. The new laptop is a breeze to work on and still very pretty.  It is very strange writing an essay without a cigarette in my hand, though.  When I think that all of my creative and academic writing, since 1987, was done with a cigarette in one hand, it is with an odd, calm, unobstructed but strangely empty clarity that I attempt to think creatively sans addiction.  Four months is not very long in the face of a 24 year relationship with the evil weed, and it is probably a good thing to do the degree now and really practise this writing without anything to mentally lean on.  I have eaten a lot of biscuits today, but I find this is becoming less as time goes on.  As I become immersed in the task at hand, I do notice less and less that I am doing it without smoking, and that can only be a good thing.  And now to return to the essay and see if it still sounds as erudite as it did when I stood up for a stretch half an hour ago...

Woohoo! A new laptop!

I've just been setting up my NEW laptop. So excited to do this with no help so far. It's very pretty.  I expect I will be a little more web present now that I have everything I need at my fingertips. Also, I've now started studying towards the Bachelor of Information Studies, so no doubt most of my distractions will be centred around my desk, e.g. blogging, myspace, twitter, facebook, flickr.  There are just so many things to do in the same space as where I look at my study...It's okay, I know when to focus.
Here's to many more blog posts!

A bite out of the moon

Tonight there is a partial lunar eclipse. I had a chance to see it for a little while before the sky clouded over. It was fun to see the shadow that all of us and our world is making on the moon. It is hard to look at the moon without hearing Noel Fielding's voice these days, but that's hardly a bad thing.

Earlier today I was listening to Denise Hylands' Twang on RRR & she played a new song by Barb Waters & the Mothers of Pearl. It was a cover of the Diana Trask hit 'O Boy' & it was perfect as I walked through the park to the shops. Really brightened up my day. Then I started wondering what Diana Trask was doing now. In fact there is a book available from her web page entitled 'Whatever happened to Diana Trask?' Reading her web bio, I had no idea she had been so successful. I just remembered and loved the song, which must have been released when I was about seven. Tonight I bought Barb's new version from iTunes & listened the original too, and had one of those moments where music is just EVERYTHING.

Coincidentally, it appears that Diana Trask is going to guest on Spicks 'n' Specks this Wednesay, June 30th on the ABC at 8:30 pm. O Boy!

Not very wordy June

Well, that didn't go so well...it's now the 26th of June & I didn't blog. Have been really busy with other things. Good things.

One of the things has been singing & rehearsing for the gig I'm playing with gorgeous partner: guitarist and walking archive of popular music. I also had two vocal coaching sessions in the last week, and am learnng a few new techniques to help my voice along. Sharing the night with us will be the wonderful Nick Creswell, whose energy and passion never fail to excite. He has a web page for online jamming which is fantastic for playing along & for beginners too. (I'm still a perpetual beginner on guitar...) So it should be an awesome night!

Last Spring I sang at a private shindig at a club, which was great fun. Next week will be my first gig in an actual bar in about 15 years. It's never too late!

Someone recommended a book which really inspired me, The Brain That Changes Itself.
It tells stories of people who have overcome incredible obstacles through rewiring their neural pathways by doing stuff over & over until new pathways are built. If you're feeling stuck, this book will rock your world. (Not so good for the monkeys, though...)

Rock and roll!

Blog every day of June

Well, I'm 4 days late, but I'll attempt to catch up by writing a little something each day of June. As Melbourne settles in to a wintry Friday night, I'm approaching the weekend hopefully and heading out into the weather, so a longer post will follow tomorrow, when I actually have something to say....

Foiled by my own stupidity

Last night on the way home from work, I stopped at the station and had a look around the shops and bought a couple of things, ostensibly in aid of Christmas shopping, although at least two items were for myself. (This is why my Chrstmas shopping is so expensive - I rarely shop, so when i go to buy presents for other people, for every new, shiny thing I buy for someone else, there are at least two new shiny things I end up buying for myself... I've only just started to suspect that this is the goal of every retail outlet, and probably always has been since the dawn of the market economy...alright, so I'm a bit slow to catch on, probably as I've only had disposable income to speak of for about five minutes...)

So I arrived home at 7:30 pm to discover I didn't have my key. I had a good book - a couple of good books, actually, since I'd just been shopping - some soda water, some crackers, but no key. My partner was not due home till at least 9:30 and, of course had his phone switched off at the crucial moment. So I called my sister who lives about 10 minutes walk away to see if she had any keys to my house. She had just moved house two weeks ago, and she turned up with a take away container full of keys. My long-suffering sister tells me "As you know we're still unpacking & I can't find half of my own stuff, but you can try some of these."

Between me, my sister and her partner, we must have lived in about 50 houses in the last 20 years and I swear, she had defunct keys to at least a third of them in that take away container.

We tried all of them. None of them was a key to my house

-because I just don't leave spare sets with anyone anymore - even with close relatives who could be of assistance...

After 15 minutes of trying keys, my sister mentioned that her dinner guests had actually arrived & asked if I'd like to wait at her house till my partner came home. Feeling acutely misanthropic & grieving for my lost time ALONE WITH MY THOUGHTS, I accompanied her back to her house & complained all the way there, ending with "I just want to go home" as we approached a table full of her friends, who I know only a little bit.

Graciously, they explained, laughing, that I was stuck with them for at least two hours. I felt like a heel.

Knowing there were the makings of a good fish dinner at home, I decided to forego the Thai takeaway they were having, but did eat more potato chips than is advisable under international health & safety laws. The resulting salt high was particularly unpleasant.

While there, I at least got to give my sister's partner an early birthday present - some reading glasses with lights on them for reading in bed when the person next to you wants to sleep. He put them on at the dinner table & had us all in stitches. What a card.

Eventually, my partner arrived home to an empty house, got none of my messages, but decided to ring me, and came and picked me up.

It was 10:30 when I finally got inside my house, cranky, tired & wierdly high on salt.

Too late to cook the fish dinner, but never too late for pizza!

Waiting for the pizza to arrive, we searched everywhere for my keys. Not finding them in any of the usual places, I emptied out my bag.

AND THERE THEY WERE.

I am an idiot.

And then i ate the pizza.

I was so angry that I didn't notice that the prawns did not taste quite right, until the one I had to spit out.

So today went like this: get up, toilet, tea, toilet, shower, toilet, go to work, toilet, work, toilet, work, toilet, staff morning tea for a birthday, toilet, work, toilet, toilet, meeting, toilet, lunch, toilet, work, toilet, cuppa, toilet, work, toilet, train, toilet, supermarket, toilet, walk home, get rained on, toilet, get out of wet clothes, toilet, sit down.

I'm fine, really, not even irritable anymore. The rain helps.

Library Technicians' Conference

This week I am in sunny Adelaide at the ALIA Library Technician's Conference. So far it is going really well. I have realised that not everyone has done the kind of web 2.0 project like 23 things that I was fortunate enough to do at my work. I have been telling others what a good experience it was, and also hearing good ideas from many other people too.

New song on Myspace

My lovely partner & I have recorded our first song as Sea of Memes. You can hear it here
What with the study and the working and the things to watch on tv that may never be shown again, it's taken a while, but we've made a start. I'm lucky to have such a great musician to work with, and plan to write more before the winter is over.

Holidays!!!

I'd almost forgotten my blog, but after four Christmases in seven days, I am now alternating between lying on the couch and addressing my techno to do list. An hour ago I found out I can email myself from my phone (after 20 mins trying to upload photos via a cable). Hooray, who knew. The other night I spent two hours trying to download my own song from my pc to my mp3 player. It worked in the end but there was a lot of swearing involved.

My new year's resolution is to blog more and lose the anxiety about trying to be witty every post. I know, Wired magazine said the blog is dead, but I've hardly got going...

Above is a real sign I saw on my holiday to the Grampians.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

Update on the music machine

A friend at work told me that the amazing music machine is totally animation and that there is no such university. (Thanks, Sarah.) Well, that's just destroyed the magic of the Internet for me (but it looked so real!).
Oh well, it's still fun to watch.

Amazing Music Machine

A friend at work sent me an email about this machine (thanks Lyn!).

The email said:
"This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the
Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of
Engineering at the University of Iowa . Amazingly, 97% of the machines
components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation
Equipment of Bancroft,Iowa, yes farm equipment!

It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment,
calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see it
was WELL worth the effort. It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard
Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian."



Truly amazing, thought I'd share it with a few more readers.

Saturday

Today, I am mooching around the house and

Made with free image tools @ TXT2PIC.com
on the couch,eating cherries and full of reverie.
Well, you know, that is what I was doing before I sat down at the PC and started noodling around, especially trying to repost the code that would recognise my change in the font size of the word 'languishing'...
Oh well, burning eyes and three hours gone I am really enjoying reading the blogs of friends and work colleagues and actually it's a pleasant way to spend a cold Saturday afternoon.

23 things + 5 : Task #5

I've been reading about the Semantic Web . It's fascinating to think that when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, he was already working towards the concept of the Semantic Web. From my limited reading on the subject, the Semantic Web is all about computers being able to search between different types and genres of data and bring these searches together to create much more useful results and applications for everyday use on many levels. This might include:

• answering complicated questions which at present are not interpretable by computers.
  
• getting different types of technology to interact for a more streamlined outcome for people.
• reducing the amount of interpretation of data that humans are required to do, so that we could rely on machines to do much more of the matching up and organising for us.

And all of this with no sinister overtones either...

23 + 5 : Task #4 c

I worked out what I was doing wrong with Voyage. I was loading the url of the web page I wanted to feed into Voyage, instead of clicking on the RSS icon on the web page and cutting and pasting THAT url into Voyage. This took only 4 days to work out. So actually, Voyage works ok. But how does it know that it's me? I don't log in but when I open Voyage again, my feed from yesterday is there. How does it do that?