Projects

It was YB's birthday on Tuesday and, to celebrate, we went to Luna Park on Saturday. As it is her last year in her twenties, she decided it was fitting to go to an amusement park and act like kids, going on silly rides and stuff. I'm not one for rides but Luna Park is such a good opportunity for pictures.

The highlight of the trip was Coney Island; DB pondered that we were old skool... but how can you beat silly mirrors and slippery slides. As we entered the building I raced ahead to take happy snaps of the girls on the various rides and a random guy came up to me, thinking the girls were some kind of celebrities or something, and asked me if I was a professional photographer. No I'm not and no the girls were just having fun. DB and I decided to try out the big kids slide, which is crazy high, as we were about to slide down we questioned what the hell we were doing up there but, after the first go we were immediately back up the stairs for a second go. Fun. Later a group of us tried the Wheel of Joy, where you sat on top of a spinning cone and tried to stay on the longest. I slid off fairly early but DB was challenging for a win when she stacked it and did a full forward roll over her tiara and got a couple of bruises. Awesome!

None of the other rides at Luna Park quite matched Coney Island, except maybe the Dodge 'ems, which is classic. YB decided it was more fun to try to avoid being bumped, which only just made her even more of an appealing target! We also tried some of the games. The first was a sort-of race where you tried to roll balls into holes, each hole makes your chariot fish go a certain distance. Three Bangarra dancers had a go and we got third-last, second-last and last positions. We have shamed our company. Later on JS and I tried the Clowns; I initially thought that high scores are good and felt dejected half way through when I was only on four when we found out that we should actually aim to get a LOW score. Consequently I did pretty well and got a Cat In The Hat, which I gave to JPB. He loved it...

I haven't previously had much time for the behemoth "Social Networking" site that is MySpace. What's the point when you have your own blog site??? MySpace seemed so limited in it's ability to be customised, unlike a drupal site like this one that is endless in it's scope. A profile box, a list of favourite music and film and stuff, a bunch of friends... it was easy to be quite cynical about it.

Until I found out about div overlays. It's brutal, like hammering a nail with a sledgehammer, but it frees you up to get quite creative. Although in executing it you can run the risk of creating a page that doesn't look anything like a MySpace page, which could confuse your average MySpacer. Retaining some kind of resemblance to a plain ol' MySpace page is still necessary.

So I've gone and customised my MySpace page, which is why I've neglected this site for a while, and now it looks pretty. I used a design that I had previously planned to implement on this site, the mirrorballs, except that considering I haven't been clubbing for a while now it doesn't seem all that appropriate. I may change it to a dance sort of picture perhaps... Anyway, the possibilities with div overlays are endless! I've also done a couple of others: Science of Sleep (the prototype...) and True Stories. The last one I only finished on the weekend and it's real pretty; not hard to do when there's already a design format to follow, I basically didn't stray too far from the existing publicity material. There's been the usual cross-browser problems (don't get me started talking about Mac Internet Explorer 5.x, I don't think it knows what to do with a negative margin, I'm just hoping nobody actually uses that browser anymore especially since MacOSX comes with Safari) but on the whole, I'm happy with it.

Take a look, add yourself as a friend, go nuts in the comment box! Come to the show! And don't forget to drop by mine as well...

Does anyone know why the harbour has just exploded? I love random fireworks. We had just finished work and were sitting in the office checking emails and stuff when suddenly it sounded like the pier was being bombarded. Racing outside we found the sky ablaze, which lasted for the next half an hour.

Sydney loves a good fireworks display and, besides New Years, this was pretty special. We just don't know what for? It would have been nice to have had some warning so I could have brought decent equipment to work to take pictures.

I haven't written much about the love of my life lately but everything is going well. It's just a bit too personal to talk too much about us. But he's been absolutely adorable and we've been having a great time. Well past the eighteen month point and still going strong.

Previous: A Slice of Blog 2 - The Commonwealth Games Edition.
I'm feeling a bit lost for things to blog about so I'm just going to give out a bit of link love. Besides, it's been a while since I have done one of these...

Ranting Details

Only a few days ago I had a discussion with someone about how I've been lucky enough to have never fallen while I was dancing. Lesson number 1: Never state anything like that as you are pretty much guaranteeing that you will be meeting the floor at the soonest possible date.

Here's another perspective on the life of a dancer. There's lots of travelling and photos, which is quite familiar to anyone that's read my blog here, but there's also more pointed feet (we also point our feet in Bangarra, but we also flex them, sickle them, "Barbie foot" them...) and not enough gay bars. Well, actually, I guess there isn't alot of mention about gay bars here either. Anyway, the writing is terrific and he loves a bit of Lily Allen so it's two thumbs up from me...

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Closely related is this site:
The Winger

Bringing together the global dance community via the internet.

I just have to say this: I WANT ONE. One of these sites, I mean. It's such a good idea, and well done to Kristin for getting it done. It's very "Ballet slash American"-centric but there's a few exceptions and, besides, no whingeing, there's always the option of offering to contribute to change that... Or, make your own... hmm...

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Simon Jobling (aka OnePhatDJ)

I heard this track in a DJ mix way back in 2002 and was hooked. I had to find out what the track was and where I could get it. I managed to dig up a white label copy on eBay and paid a fortune for it to be shipped to me.

Web Developer by day, podcast DJ whenever he can fit it in. And his mixes are pretty cool, too, so check them out. Not as good as mine, though but, hey, I don't have a child to take care of...

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Ooops! I'd better put a gay link on the page. This will do:
GayGamer.net - For boys who like boys who like joysticks. And girls who like girls who like rumble packs!

But, I do remember that we often played games together with our next door neighbors. And one game I remember distinctly at these gatherings Barbie, for the NES.

Of course there are gays in computer games. Just look at Ash, from Bare Knuckles 3, here to the left. He looks like he's on his way to a leather club. Don't mess with him, though, 'cos he's good with his fists... in so many ways!

And that's all I feel like sharing today...

I had installed an audio feature to allow y'all to download my mixes but unfortunately posted the link to Blentwell. The result being a massive increase in downloads which shut down the site. Oops!

Lucky for me it all happened near the end of the month so I only had to wait a couple of days for the bandwidth usage level to reset. Even so, I was anxious to have it offline even for that short amount of time. Just in case I have disabled the download feature for now, which is a real shame because I really wanted to have it all come from here. So much for trying to get a little bit of extra traffic!

But do enjoy the mixes, even if they are being kept elsewhere!

This maybe old news (sorry about that but I've been on blogging hiatus for the last month...) but I've got a new toy! SLR - very exciting. I'm now on a whole new level of photography! It'll take a while to get used to all the new features and I'm considering taking courses to learn how to do it all properly. I've already got a couple of favourite piccies too!

Not only that but JPB got me a Holga. Super cool! I've been eyeing out all the cool pictures that other lomographers have taken. It's on the other end of the photography spectrum from the Alpha, which is a terrific contrast. One is ultra-precise, but the Holga you can only hope and pray (until, again, you get used to it) and the pictures aren't immediately bloggable (read: not digital) but I've developed a roll and will scan some of the pictures soon.

And lets not forget the *new* phone that has a 3.2 Megapixel camera. Beats the shit out of the crap Motorola V3x that I'm going to be paying off for the next year and a half! Motorola: never ever again.

Tags: camera, slr, Sony, lomograph, holga, mobile, photo,

Listen: MoJ2007
1 Snow Patrol Chasing Cars (Diffusion Dance Mastermix)
2 Coldplay White Shadows (Morgan Page Bootleg Remix)
3 Justin Timberlake My Love (Paul Oakenfold Remix)
4 Nelly Furtado Maneater (Peter Rauhofer Reconstruction Mix)
5 Beyonce Ring The Alarm (Freemasons Club Mix)
6 Pink U And Ur Hand (Beatcult Remix)
7 Girls Aloud Something Kinda Oooh (Free ZR Mix)
8 Dannii Minogue So Under Pressure (Express Theory Mix)
9 Nelly Furtado Promiscuous (DJ Nicky T Electro House Remix)
10 Fergie London Bridge (DJ Nicky T Electro House Remix)
11 Till West v DJ Delicious v Cassie v Jay Z (DJ Nicky T Mashup)
12 Gwen Stefani Wind It Up (Electro Bashment Remix)
13 Basement Jaxx Take Me Back To Your House (Jaxx Club Mix)
14 Basement Jaxx Take Me Back To Your House (Kurd Maverick Remix)
15 Justin Timberlake SexyBack (Armand's Mix)
16 Channel 88 The Groove Is Taking Over (Club Mix)
17 Sneaky Sound System Pictures (Tonite Only Remix)
18 Sarah Nixey Strangelove (Lodge Radio Remix)
19 The Killers When You Were Young (The Lindbergh Palace Remix)

FINALLY!!! This mix started mid December and has been finished for the last three weeks. The delay was getting the motivation to whip up a CD Cover which, in the end, was a botch up that took a couple of hours playing around. I didn't really like this mix the first few listens, mainly because it goes all over the place. And I wasn't really a big fan of Stefani's new stuff (so why did I include it then???) but now I quite like it.

Oh, and sorry for the lack of posts lately. Was in a little bit of a slump for the last couple of months. Not quite ready to hit the blog hard, though, am only prepared to take little steps. Figure that a new mix would be a good way to start again.

Technorati Tags: Mix, CD, Dance, Pop, Mashup

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I've been back from o/s for the last four weeks. It's been difficult trying to find inspiration to blog when I'm adjusting down to Sydney from the sensory hyperstimulation that is London and Paris, whilst fretting about next year's contract with Bangarra as well as an impending milestone of the birthday variety looming in the not too distant future (and it's my first one that's ended with a zero and divisible by three...)

Lots of cool things have happened but how could I possibly address them when there's been things I haven't wanted to blog that are nevertheless more blogworthy? Like why should I blog about, say, how much I'm loving Robbie Williams's new album when I'm being introspective? Sure I could blog about that but, well, that's rather a bit too personal don't you think? I don't generally like to reveal too much about myself but I have a blog??? That has my name on it? Hmm...

And I get nervous when people in real-life talk about my blog. I think I would much rather have them leave comments. What goes on tour stays on tour, the second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about fight club and for God's sake if you want to respond to my blog LEAVE A COMMENT! I'll be more than happy to respond.

Sorry that you have to register to do that but I had been getting comment spam. I hate comment spam.

And now maybe I can start talking about interesting things now. Like: "How cool is Robbie right now?"

PS and for all you IE6 crew, I've tweaked it a bit. Satisfied?

All you bitches need to get a decent browser 'cos this page looks fine to me and I use Firefox and Opera. In fact it looks better than alright, it looks damn pretty. I had upgraded my drupal installation and lost a few ie fixes but, being overseas for the last month, I had no idea that it looked bad.

But I will fix it up for you plebs with the old Internet Explorer. But don't think I'm happy about the situation.

Also, I've been getting comment spam. Screw you comment spammers. Now I'm increasing the level of authorisation required to leave comments. I would much rather legitimate comment makers not have to register onto this blog just to leave a message. I hate spam.

Speaking of comments I've been getting some strange stalker-like messages referring to people I know. Screw you guys, if you can't meet my friends in the good old fashioned way then don't think I'm going to help you out. If you want a date with her then fly over here to Australia and ask her out your bloody self! Actually on second thoughts, don't. I don't mind getting the odd request from decent fans but, fuck, some people need to get a life.

I'm glad to get all of that off my chest.