Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

It's been a weird couple of days. From being elated after finally receiving the last piece of required information for my visa application, I've now experienced the other end of the emotional spectrum as I find myself without a job.

Vein hasn't been doing well for some time now - slow business for months and a lack of new prospects - and management finally decided that things had to be cut back. Unfortunately, I was the easy target as I'm pretty much leaving anyway to go to the US. But I'm not too stressed about things although it's certainly not an ideal situation - there's some severance and holiday pay owing that should see me through.

In a way, the other staff are in a worse situation as they have to decide whether they want to help Vein get out of this rut or look after number one and look for new jobs. Things certainly didn't sound too positive when they were outlined to us today - huge tax debts and worse. It happens to so many small businesses, I just didn't expect it to happen to a company I worked for.

So this is the crew out for drinks on my last afternoon: Kristen (account exec), Clare (most awesome studio manager), Katherine (designer), me and Paul (designer and Flash guru). Missing is Luisa, the art director, who unfortunately had to be at a design conference today. A great bunch of people who loved working with, who I will miss terribly and for who I truly hope for the best.

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, Sydney on March 30, 2007 at at 3:15:00 AM 0 comments    

You American types probably have not heard of this guy, Josh Pyke, but not only is it a good song but it's an adorable film clip that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Beware of a plentiude of fade outs....


I actually see quite a bit of symbolism in this video beside it's being cute. He sings of memories and how they can be forgotten over time which I believe the chicks represent. The crocodile is you. We have many memories but as time passes, they can fade and disappear as our mind consumes more and more. Anyway, thought I'd share. And by the way, the plant nursery on Mississippi should be getting some new chicks in tomorrow so Kim and i will try to get over there and take some pics! Yay!!!

Posted in: chaosgurl, general musings, music on March 28, 2007 at at 12:03:00 PM 0 comments    

Hooray!!! My National Police Record arrived in the mail last night, meaning I could finally send in my application to the US Consulate today... the last stage of this whole drawn out process has begun!

Apparently the Consulate is scheduling extra interview slots at the moment because they're basically closing the whole place down when the APEC circus hits town later in the year, so I'm kind of hopeful that the interview will be organised sometime real soon... well, we can dream can't we?

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration on at at 1:40:00 AM 0 comments    

So I talked to the crime lab at NSW Police Headquarters today, just to really truly absolutely confirm that they had received my fax on Friday and that things were Actually Happening with it. The officer I spoke to confirmed that they did indeed have all my information and were processing it.

She was unable to give me a firm date for completion, but did promise me that she would mark my application as "URGENT". I think she realised that Blacktown's incompetence has stuffed me around and seemed keen to help out as much as possible. Goodness, customer service! Whatever next?

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration on March 21, 2007 at at 2:01:00 AM 0 comments    

It's true.

In this day and age, protecting your child from violence and the cruelties of the world is improbable. With the internet now at our fingertips we can peruse thousands of sites in our lifetime. Trying to stop it is a hopeless case and watching someone try to stop it is entertaining.

A concerned mother came up to the counter today. She needed to be able to set parental controls on her sons computer. Which is all fair and good. But we asked what she wanted blocked and her answer was "Porn." Weeellll, unfortunately there is no such software that could handle such a task, we explained. The kid was a teenager and she would have to block each site one by one as they came along. But what about Youtube? What about the news? There was way too much out there. And we showed her why. Going through the browswer history, we already saw what kind of kid this was: Hot Topic store, brokenarm.jpg, skydiving accidents, myspace, Gwar events, and on and on.

Just then, the kid saunters up to the counter and asks what his mom is doing. His hair is shaped in a freshly done mohawk. He is shocked to discover that the computer we are all looking at is his and that we know every website he's visited in the last two days. We continue talking to his mother, in front of him, about monitoring him. Recording his keystrokes, checking his browser history daily, blocking groups of sites. The conversation slowly turned over about skydiving and the videos he'd seen lately of people falling from perilous heights and surviving.

The fact of the matter is, when the mother approached, I would have thought she wanted to block a few sites for her 10 year old. But in fact she already had a worldly teen on her hands, who had the curiousity to explore every dark corner of the internet no matter what control she thinks she has. She was obviously quite concerned, but its not the 1950's anymore and god knows, I don't have any great parenting tips, but I think the kid will turn out ok in the end.

Every year, our lives depend more and more on the internet. We count on it to tell us where to go and what to think next. Blocking the internet should become a crime. It's a free world of free speech and uncensorship. Protecting your kids should be not monitoring their every move, but asking them all the time what new things they have discovered. Let the internet be a tool for a common ground of communication between you and your kid, not an obstruction. And thats my parenting advice from someone who knows nothing about parenting!!

And in other news....
Cameron is the cutest cricket player ever!!!

Posted in: chaosgurl, general musings, portland on March 20, 2007 at at 10:00:00 PM 0 comments    

Yesterday was a bit of a sad day for me: my last game for the Baulkham Hills Cricket Club before I move to the US. We played - and lost - our semi-final match against Erskine Park, bringing our season to an end. Since 1994, I have played over 130 matches with pretty much the same bunch of guys.... and they have become some of my greatest friends, even though cricket is pretty much all we have in common, with careers as diverse as accountant, greenkeeper, removalist, electrician and graphic designer! So here's a salute to the mighty Baulko B5s... it's been a pleasure, boys and maybe one day I'll be back to roll the arm over once more!

Back row: Dave Henry, Jeremy Billings, Darren Tipton (captain), Harry Izmirlian, Brett Stapleton, Brett McLaren
Front Row: Cameron Booth (vice-captain), Richard McInerney, Brian King, Andrew Murphy, Roger Deane

Posted in: australia, chaosboy, sport on March 19, 2007 at at 3:12:00 AM 0 comments    

Despite our bad luck, I would like to announce to the table that there have been many good things despite idiots in our beauracracies and Cam and I being so far apart.

A Prost! to hearing back from the Australian Forsenic Dept. in the first place!
A Prost! to Matt being 30!
A Prost! to Kat being 21!
A Prost! to us winning our first Dragon Boat race of the year against Ducky's evil old team!
A Prost! to expensive life jackets!
A Prost! to Chaos Streak looking more like the original drawing than a bunch of polygons!


A Prost! to getting a raise and actually having money to spend!
A Prost! to Widmer and their yummy consumable beer
A Prost! to Portland for not raining for an entire week!
A Prost! to Cam's patience, for he is doing all the legwork here. I'm just waiting here patiently for him :D
A Prost! to bicycles, even if they don't go fast and make funny noises
A Prost! to blogging. Because it makes me realize how much more you can do in your time and how much recording can be done, even if your audience couldn't care less
AND A Prost! to love. Because I wouldn't typing this if I wasn't prepared to wait for however long it takes for Cam to get over here. My one and only.

Posted in: blog, chaosgurl, chaoslove on March 15, 2007 at at 11:17:00 PM 0 comments    

It's a familiar refrain often uttered by villains in James Bond films and the like... and today I know how they feel: the one normal person floating in a sea of incompetence. So I've been waiting for my Criminal Record Check results to come back for over three weeks now, and when an envelope from the NSW Police appeared in my letterbox today, I thought the last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Sigh.

Not to be. Instead, the enclosed letter outlined that the Forensic Services Unit had my prints, but not my application form. Yet the Police Station had assured me that they had faxed my application through and that everything was okay... obviously it wasn't.

It's a problem that should be easily fixed... I can fax the application form and my receipt (proving I have paid the fee) through to the FSU tomorrow, but I'm still frustrated that something so superficially simple can turn out to be so dang hard!

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration on at at 2:51:00 AM 0 comments    

Hey!
I found it! If there is something I love in the world besides Cam, its super exaggerated Marvel style comic art. I have been trying to track this down for ages and now it can be mine for $3.25 off ebay! I think all im getting is an old Animal Planet TV catalog BUT if there is more of this kinda stuff inside, I can't go wrong! BTW, this issue is from 2004 so there are no tragic endings. Just the classics, to be sure.

Now that I've finally entered into the comic book store on Mississippi, I want devour every comic in sight. Im outta the loop! It's been so long! So many talented people have put out new stuff!! How will I ever catch up??!!

Posted in: art, chaosgurl, comics on March 8, 2007 at at 9:23:00 PM 0 comments    

So when I saw this sign in Manzanita on Oregon's coast in January of this year, I had a good laugh at it... and then I saw a documentary on the Cascadia Subduction Zone on ABC TV tonight.

Eek.

A 9.1 earthquake just off the Pacific Northwest coast. An earthquake that would last for over four minutes and bring tsunami waves crashing onto the coast from Northern California to British Columbia in far less time than the authorities could do anything useful with... like warning people. The last one happened 300 years ago and is recorded in Native American oral history and written village records in Japan, as the resultant tsunamis sped across the Pacific and smashed into that faraway land with terrifying force.

According to the documentary, most of the major Pacific Northwest cities will be somewhat safe as they're located off the coast, but it's still a little unnerving. Australia is such an old continent, with very few earthquakes and no volcanoes at all... America is geologically young and active... and documentaries like that just make it all a little more real and scary.

Maybe I should stop watching TV?

Posted in: chaosboy, portland, united states on at at 2:41:00 AM 0 comments    

It's amazing how a bike can change the ways of life. Instead of walking, you fly. Instead of taking the bus, you go your own route. Even this giant clunky excuse for a bike is just makes going places so much more invigorating.

There have been a few posts lately about love. And here is another one. Even though this bike and I aren't to that commited level of the relationship as of yet, it still helps me to "love" Portland just that extra bit.


It's a loaner at the moment. But it's heavy and has big baskets on the back. It'll be the grocery totin' bike until Cam and I get a set of sweet mountain kicking bikes. In the meantime, I wish I could always be riding in the sun, whistling a tune, with a baguette and a fresh cut of flowers in the back, rolling along.

Posted in: chaosgurl, portland on March 7, 2007 at at 5:10:00 PM 0 comments    

Her Mark
Originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

I felt like being creative tonight... so here's a glimpse of the tattoo that I had done at the same time as Chaosgurl's engagement ring. On days when I feel that the distance that separates us is just too enormous, I always look at this and am reminded of her...

Sorry for being so soppy, but that's the way it is :-)

Posted in: chaosboy, chaoslove, flickr, photography on March 6, 2007 at at 3:47:00 AM 0 comments    

... with Chaosgurl, we all know that! But I'm talkin' a different kind of love here, a digital kind of love for computer software that fits the way I want to work so perfectly that I wonder what I did without it all this time. This wondrous piece of computer wizardry is Adobe's latest offering, Lightroom. Aimed squarely at photographers, it promises to help you cull, sort, rate, organise, develop and output your digital photos in a fraction of time that it used to take. And you know what?

That's exactly what it does.

Import and rename your JPG or RAW files directly from the camera. Compare and flag photos. Mark the duds for deletion. Add huge amounts of keywording and metadata with ease. Apply development settings in a completely non-destructive way. Export output files in your desired format, resolution and file type. It's all quite wonderful! And thanks to my gorgeous Chaosgurl, I laid my hands on it at the US wholesale price - around $AU150 cheaper than if I bought it here in Oz. Happy days!

Adobe have a free 30 day trial on their website; if you use a Mac, you may also like to check out Apple's Aperture, which takes a completely different approach to the same problem. I love Lightroom's module-based system, which makes it very clear where you sort photos and where you edit them, whereas others will rave about Aperture's free-form approach, which lets you take any action at any stage of the process. Each to their own, I say, and it's great to have the choice between two great programs like this!

Posted in: adobe lightroom, apple, chaosboy, photography on March 5, 2007 at at 3:13:00 AM 1 comments    

Seacliff
Originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

CB: With the growing realisation that I'm not going to be here in Oz for much longer, I've made a conscious effort to get out and see all those things that I've been meaning to look at for a while - before I'm not able to.

This thought is what dragged me out of bed at 5:00 in the morning on Sunday to go and see the remarkable Seacliff Bridge on the Illawarra Coast south of Sydney. This new bridge replaces the section of Lawrence Hargraves Drive between the towns of Coalcliff and Clifton, a short stretch of road that was under constant threat of rockfalls and landslides from the unstable cliff face above.

What followed was one of the most perfect mornings of photography I have ever had - a beautiful sunrise at Stanwell Tops, followed by glorious morning light at Coalcliff Pool and on the bridge itself. Five minutes after I crossed the bridge, the clouds closed in from the south and the rest of the day was very wet and grey. Well worth getting up early for! Check out more photos from the day on my photo stream on Flickr!

Posted in: australia, chaosboy, flickr, photography on at at 3:00:00 AM 0 comments    

For those of you who are curious as to what dragon boating is... I apologize. I was going to post a picture or a drawing but Im tellin ya, dragon boats with 24 people in them are hard to draw. I tried thrice. As for pictures, I had my oppurtunity to take a photo in daylight today but my camera decided to run out of battery. So, as you see, I have supplied a picture of a "typical" dragon boat.


Now, our boat doesn't have a guy in a chair just chillin' in the front like that. We also do not have snazzy red paddles. The boats will typically fit 24 paddlers and for competitions you can have no less than 20. In our group (or team) we have people ranging all ages and backgrounds. It's a fun versatile way to broaden your social horizons and also to learn some new skills of the water faring ways.

I do this sport for a few reasons, one: to see the city from a new perspective, two: explore a new sport that I can hopefully get better at and three: to get away from this computer. Number three being the first and foremost important. This winter has been cold and miserable and I love being able to get home and cuddle up and just be warm. Usually the last thing anyone would want to do is go out on the freezing river and paddle around. But, as much I try to make excuses, I end up doing it because it prevents me from just lollygagging around my apartment.

Reasons I don't think Ill be in the Dragon Boating business for long is the fact that the sport is very linear. Even when I get good at it, and the weather is warm, I'll get bored. The repetitivness has already gotten to me. I plan to branch out into a more dynamic sport such as rock climbing or just running around with a soccer ball. I will be much more fulfilled with a more full body activity that requires a bit of strategy thinking... and of course with these sorts of sports I will need another body... such as my wonderful Cameron who is up for any crazy idea that I throw at him!

Anyway... I'll put up some pictures someday!! We have yet to paddle at a reasonable hour with light anyway and I am counting the days till Day Light Savings! Yay!!

Posted in: chaosgurl, portland, sport on March 4, 2007 at at 8:27:00 PM 0 comments